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Lotus Notes For Linux To Be Released By IBM
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jul 10, 2006 07:09 AM
from the follow-on-corporate dept.
from the follow-on-corporate dept.
gamigad writes "According to ZDNet, Lotus Notes 7.0.1 will be released for Linux. Availability is expected to be on July 24.
It ain't gonna be a free lunch, tho" It's going to be based mainly on the Eclipse framework, and it does appear that you'll be able to swap a Linux version for a Windows or Mac version if you so choose.
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Can't be a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can't be a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Notes & Wine + Drag & Drop = unstability (Score:3, Informative)
In the end I had to move to a VMware Workstation solution to keep using Notes under Linux.
I've been waiting for a native version for years. It's about time
Absolutely a bad thing! (Score:2, Insightful)
Run from this, Linux, run very fast and very far or Notes will never let you run again. Aieeeeee!
Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:5, Informative)
I know of several IT Department heads for Fortune 500 Companies that have asked for software that matches MS Echange / Lotus Notes for Linux before they would concider switching to Linux desktops.
This is also the first step in IBM actually putting their product line behind their public stand of supporting open source operating systems, not just their money into open source projects.
The biggest drawback is the eclipse framework. Eclipse's java requires sun's jvm which conflicts with gjc. Open Office requires gjc in linux for 100% functionality, sun's jvm won't cut it.
Parent
Re:Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:2, Troll)
Different jvms do not have to conflict (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to use Sun's JVM. According to the Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan [eclipse.org], there are all kinds of other supported JVMs, e.g. IBM's, HP's, etc. Other VMs might work, they are just not officially supported and tested.
I know for a fact as well that the Red Hat folks have been successfully compiling Eclipse with GCJ also.
I'm not really sure why you claim that the JVM conflicts either. You can drop a JRE into eclipse/jre and that's what the launcher will use to the exclusion of anything else.
Mechanik
Parent
I've been using IBM's J9 JDK with Eclipse 3.2 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:3, Informative)
No, the biggest drawback is that it's just the mail and database client. No Domino Designer, no Domino Administrator. So all your developers and database and server admins still need to run Windows.
Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
Not free? (Score:3, Informative)
From the summary:
I don't this will be a blocking issue for the people who choose to deploy notes. I am very glad I don't have to use it any more.
Too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)
This comes severely late, in my opinion. The Wine [winehq.com] and the CodeWeavers [codeweavers.com] people have put work into running Notes on Linux.
IMHO, it would've been better if IBM had put this investment into Wine so other applications had profited as well. A proper native compilation along with some polishing for the various desktops could've made this "achievement" years earlier. Think Google's Picasa [google.com], which was nicely ported to Linux this way, and runs like a charm.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Better for us, yes, but for IBM? They're doing this to *sell* Notes, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
After a lot of effort you might be able to hack some of the Windows-ness out of it, but it would be a nightmare to maintain.
Well, obviously they have already dealt with multi-platformness. You think that's a maintenance nightmare as well? Of course not. They probably did their best to isolate the platform-specific stuff and put the rest in separate libs.
No! Nooo! (Score:3, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Okay, now I feel better.
B
Re:No! Nooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No! Nooo! (Score:4, Informative)
AMEN, BROTHER!!!
There are not words in the English language to describe how much I am in utter comtempt for Lotus Notes. I once composed a three-page list of ways in which Lotus Notes sucks. Most of it was a list of client bugs and inconsistencies, because I didn't have much experience with the server itslef.
Later, I tried developing a simple agent that would compose an e-mail, taking information from fields stored elsewhere, and sending it out to a list of people. I never could get the damned thing to work. (Too long to explain here.) To this day, I'll write code in javascript, php, VB, C#, perl, whatever. But I refuse to touch Lotus Notes. Period. Even the most trivial of tasks are insanely complicated. (Okay, to be fair, I won't write Gimp scripts in Scheme, either.)
I'm sorry, and I am not a Microsoft lackey, but I'd take Exchange/Outlook over Notes any day. I'd rather use GMail as a corporate communications solution than Lotus Notes. Hell, I'd rather use yellow sticky notes on monitors than Lotus Notes!
As for the server, our entire Notes infrastructure has to be rebooted once a week at my company. (A very large MNC...) Once a frickin' week! No other application has that requirement. If SAP told us, "Yeah, and you'll have to reboot the SAP servers every Sunday night," we'd have their heads on a plate. But for some weird reason, Notes (which is just as critical to our business) gets away with it. Half the servers usually don't come back up without intervention, and our wonderful Notes server crew doesn't actually bother to check, so our operations center has to call them. Plus, we're constantly having to deal with mail servers crashing in the middle of the day, and the only explanations we get are, "It's a Notes thing. It just glitches like that sometimes." As you can tell, I have no particular fondness for our Notes support team, but they're not unique. I've worked at two other companies that use Lotus Notes, and the exact same thing happens at every one of them.
And to the "It's not really an e-mail system, it's a collaborative database application development environment..." people out there, go to hell. No, it's not. There's no such thing as a "flat database." It's called a frickin' table, and it's useless. If it were relational, maaaybe. But then if it were relational, I still wouldn't be using it, I'd be using Oracle, or MySQL, PostgreSQL, even MS SQL Server. You know, something competent.
So it's an awful e-mail system, it's an awful development environment, it's an awful database system. Let's see, that leaves... oh right. NOTHING. Lotus Notes has absolutely no useful value whatsoever. Q.E.D. Companies that use it (speaking from experience) are using it not because it's the best solution to their needs, but because they've invested a lot of money in it. (Which, by the way is STUPID. They're ignoring the cost going forward, which is the only relevant factor that should be considered!) If IBM really had their customers' best interest in mind, they would simply send out letters to everyone saying, "We're sorry, but in six months, we're going to stop supporting all version of Lotus Notes and never release another." Maybe even open-source the code so that maybe competent people can maybe turn it into something semi-useful.
Parent
Re:No! Nooo! (Score:4, Interesting)
Restarting your Domino servers once a week is not right. Domino doesn't require that. That needs to be looked at.
So - do you actually know why they require restarts?
It might not be Domino.
Seriously.
I manage a number of Domino servers in my job. Some of them have to be restarted at least once a month, often because they've begun to degrade massively in their performance - or worse, they've crashed.
The other servers are fine, and will run for months before they get restarted - and they're restarted because of OS patches or other maintenance, not because of problems on the Domino server.
Why is this? Well, one word - McAfee's Groupshield. The servers which run it require careful care and occasional kicking. The servers that don't need Groupshield on them don't have it, because it's a PITA which causes us grief.
We'd like to move away from Groupshield, but it requires lots of evaluation/testing/piloting, and we have other projects to be getting on with.
And don't think I'm singling out Groupshield. I've seen some abysmal backup programs, content security programs, and other third party add-ins in my time. Don't even think about mentioning ArcServe, for instance. Basically, lots of 3rd party software talks to Notes/Domino via the C/C++/COM/Java APIs it exposes - and not all of them are particularly well written.
Your experience with the Domino servers is not typical of others. There may be a specific cause for that - if not technical, then management or procedural. But I do find it very difficult to give your grievances ANY credit when you espouse rubbish like this that can so easily be explained, yet is related with so few details that it is difficult for anyone to easily check the facts.
Parent
EEEeeeew! (Score:3, Funny)
Notes is well known for its 'unique' interface. too much repetition? Why does this post have too much repetition?
Re:EEEeeeew! (Score:2, Informative)
Blleee-e-e-at! (Score:2, Funny)
IBM internal (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAIK, Notes was the single big piece missing to allow desktop transition to Linux inside IBM. I would bet that the more geeky IBM employees that were stuck on Windows because of Notes will change.
And maybe in the future the company will encorage this.
If you consider the sheer size of IBM its no small deal for Linux deskop usage...
Just speculating though... Is there any IBMer wanting to comment?
Re:IBM internal (Score:4, Interesting)
Hope this helps.
Parent
Re:IBM internal (Score:2)
Re:IBM internal (Score:3, Interesting)
I would guess that this announcement comes from having recently sold a largish customer on linux, or at the request of a large customer. If it were just for interna
Like Notes (Score:4, Insightful)
Late, but still interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It represents a decent answer to the "oops, someone stole my laptop at the airport" problem in that it offers both a quick recovery process and some protection that the stealers should not get at your data.
I'll be very curious as to what happens with respect to document management, whether they'll be supporting OpenOffice.org, or if there's either some other strategy (SmartSuite for Linux???), or a lack of strategy...
Re:Late, but still interesting... (Score:2)
Great News (Score:2, Insightful)
it is free to move to Linux from Windows/Mac (Score:4, Informative)
People are missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, as someone that has to use Notes, I'm salivating just at the prospect of the better view/window management that Eclipse provides. Eclipse is an extremely flexible and customizeable framework, and the lack of such customizeablity has been hurting the usability of Notes for a long time. "What do you mean the preview pane is fixed to be at the bottom of the screen? You mean I can't dock it at the right? ARRRRRGH!". Etc.
If the people on Notes start following the Eclipse Way (TM), things will only get better from here.
Mechanik
Ed Brill, the guy quoted in the story is a blogger (Score:3, Informative)
This is fantastic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is fantastic! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Resume (Score:4, Funny)
Lotus Notes on Linux is unstable (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lotus Notes on Linux is unstable (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Notes has for years been a product in need of a first class HCI makeover, but has got instead marketing driving makeovers that make things more confusing than they need to be.
However, at some point you have to trade off features for simplicity. And a lot of Notes administrative complexity comes from the ability to delegate administration in a secure fashion. You can get any two: simplicity, scalability, security. Notes can be configured to be scalable and secu
But the Mac client sucked.. not sure about 7.x tho (Score:4, Informative)
Lets hope Notes 7 is an improvement over 6.x for any other platform than Windows...
Our company moved away from Domino and onto Exchange 12 months ago and it has allowed Mac enthusiasts to run Entourage 2004 which totally rocks under the Mac. The new service pack delivers native Exchange/AD/GAL in Entourage which was a welcome change.
I've been aware of this work for a long time now.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What most people don't know is that Notes was always built to be ported. It is MOSTLY portable code. Only the user interface calls themselves -- which have always been kept apart from the rest of the code -- is platform specific. This concept of a "Separation Layer" has been in the server and client since the earliest days of the product back in the early 90's. The UI port to run within the Eclipse framework (which IBM has been a huge part of) was much easier than anyone expected.
The best news -- for those who run the product anyway -- is that this isn't a "Port" or a "reworking" of the code. This is the same secure, stable, code. It's not just "compatible" its the actual code so there won't be problems of compatibility between versions running on different operating systems. The only potential issue will be that locally stored applications will be case sensitive on Linux but not on other platforms. Sloppy programming practices then will be highlighted if users run local applications that haven't been tested on a case sensitive operating system. This has long been true on the server side.
You may or may not like the product -- that has no value in this discussion. About 120 million people use it every day, and for those people one major barrier to moving toward a linux workstation has been lifted.
IBM is moving albeit slowly (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM makes some cool stuff. We have a "lifeboat" CD that actually installs a redhat derivative over the network, and configures all the applications (notes included) and vpn. It is fairly slick, although it is really geared towards the average employee. At work (IBM) I run Ubuntu, some people run Fedora, and others Gentoo. Some of the highlights of IBM technology include one of the coolest printer config systems ever. It is amazing how easily you configure the printer via Firefox. I guess if I had a single complaint about the company it is our love of RPMs, but with alien all can be made right. The pre-release Notes client for linux is slow but they are working on it, in the meantime running it within Crossover Office is fine by me. I have never been told what to run at the office, I suppose if your manager didn't want you messing with Linux they could forbid it, but really don't mess with you unless you are infected with a virus, or running a switch or hub in your cube without manager approval. I have worked a few places and IBM is by far the most Linux friendly, excited about moving forward place I have been. I can't think of a day someone didn't talk about Linux, or how much they hate ATIs crap support for Linux.
As for Notes being a necessary evil,,, well I feel this is an issue that comes down to groupware vs email. If you are in the give me Pine or give me death camp, Lotus Notes is going to drive you mad. If you are in the Gmail camp Lotus Notes is likely to be your enemy. If you are an employee that lives and dies by a calendar, and meetings, then Notes is a friend. The UI arguments are more of a it could better, but most people will live with it and never know the difference.
Re:the horror (Score:2, Troll)
That's because Notes isn't an email client (Score:4, Insightful)
Both have since been largely superceeded by web based apps.
Parent
Re:the horror (Score:2)
I don't like it either but the alternative where I work now is SMB, email, word, visio and explorer. Notes has the right idea of delivering a unified environment for documents. Its a shame that the UI is pretty bad and poor reliability tends to give it a bad name.
OTH the OS it ran on (OS/2 then window98 back when I used it) gave it a really bad name. Perhaps deployments on Linux will be a genuine exchange killer.
Re:the horror (Score:5, Insightful)
Good god man, if you are only using it for email then you are wasting space. Lotus Notes is for COLLABORATION! It allows you to create workflow apps which are truly quite impressive. Something I have not seen done with SharePoint or anything else. The security and encryption features are impressive. I'm not a huge fan of Lotus Notes but I can seen the advantages.
Bottom line it comes down to what you are trying to do.
Parent
Re:the horror (Score:3, Insightful)
and nightmares in terms of maintenance, scalability and data quality.
Honestly, every one of these things I run into is a catastrophe. I'm sure that they were better than the manual processes that they usually replace, but I wish that they could have been implemented in php & postgresql/db2/oracle/whatever.
ah, and did I mention usability? Notes has its own usability patterns - which are different from everything else. The clie
Re:Why bother? (Score:2)
Re:Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)