Lotus Notes 8.5 Will Support Ubuntu 7.0 297
E5Rebel sends in an article from Computerworld.uk article that reports: "IBM believes Linux on the enterprise desktop is finally ready for widespread adoption. To meet future demand it is preparing to deliver its next versions of Lotus Notes enterprise collaboration software and Lotus Symphony office productivity applications for the first time with full support for Ubuntu Linux 7.0... The Ubuntu support for Notes and Symphony were a direct response to demand from customers."
Ubuntu 7.0? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:1, Informative)
IBM didn't develop lotus notes. They just bought it. I don't think they deserve all of the blame.
My fear is that they will turn Linux into OS/2, and we all know what happens next....
7.10 (Score:5, Informative)
Of course it should read "7.10" as in october 2007.
But et tu Slashdot!?
Ubuntu 7.0? (Score:2, Informative)
There is no 7.0.
7.04 , 7.10, 8.04
The format is year.month of release. Which is april and october, respectively.
Re:SmartSuite? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ubuntu 7.0? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:4, Informative)
Overreact much?
Notes is a development platform and distributed database. It's not the fault of the program if your IT department makes you use it as an email tool without end-user customisations.
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:5, Informative)
R8 is pretty much sitting on top of Eclipse. You still have notes backend but you can work with composite applications either as an NSF or as plugins. 8.1 even allows you to link to Google widgets within the client.
R8 works in Linux already (Designer client is scheduled for 8.5). What IBM is doing is certifying the client under Ubuntu 7.
Re:Why specifically Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
--
No, Notes doesn't suck... Notes is just different... but then, so is Linux.
Re:Why specifically Ubuntu? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Full support -- actually, no (Score:5, Informative)
In the mean time, as far as I know, it's possible to run Designer under Wine.
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:2, Informative)
To be precise, Windows XP [wikipedia.org] was released on 25 October, 2001 [microsoft.com].
And from what I've seen, there are still quite a number of people using 2000 at home and at work.
Re:The state of Notes today, not 5 years ago. (Score:4, Informative)
The default install of Notes has never run that fast on any computer ever built and you know it. Don't bullshit us. It takes more than 2 seconds to show the splash screen. Hell, Outlook is craploads faster than Notes and it can't do that in anywhere close to 2 seconds.
1) You're running Notes 4 or something on modern hardware.
2) You've stripped down your Notes entirely so it does nothing but load this folder of 4100 documents.
3) You're running some kind of helper application that keeps Notes resident in memory, so it doesn't actually have to load anything.
Go grab your Notes CD, do a DEFAULT INSTALL on your hardware, set up a standard user account using the standard welcome screen, then tell me how long it takes to boot.
Re:The state of Notes today, not 5 years ago. (Score:3, Informative)
You are wrong. If it takes two seconds to show the splash screen, you are either running on a seriously underpowered machine, or something is broken on your machine. Heck, I just tested connecting to one of my clients' servers by running Notes in an emulated environment while connecting to the server using VPN over the internet, and it only took 6 seconds to bring up the welcome screen (Email/Calender/Todo). 1) Notes 7.0.3 on an AMD X2 5600+. It was $150 at Fry's for the motherboard with built in video + the processor. It has 4 Gig of ram that I got for $99, although since I am running XP, it sees only 3.25 GB of ram.
2) I have stripped nothing out. The only configuration I do is make sure that double right click is turned on, as that is extremely useful, and set the home page to show the Email/Calendar/Todo.
3) No helper application.
Really, how long is it taking your Notes client to load, because if you don't believe a 2 second load time, you need to start looking at what is being done on your system.
Re:Enterprise (Score:3, Informative)
I hope I can help here: Installed user base.
If they change Notes too much, existing users will dislike it. You won't find many here that would believe that, but it's true.
I've seen this happen in real life, and can give an example - Domino Web Access (formerly known as iNotes).
Domino Web Access (DWA from hereon) is the webmail implementation of Notes - mail only, and runs in IE/Firefox. Because of limitations in the browser (it's base target is IE6 as it's a corporate product after all!), it can't assume a tabbed working space or the same kinds of controls.
Two specific examples were reading/composing emails, and selecting documents.
In Notes, new documents - for either reading or composing - open as a new tab. In DWA, they open as a new window. A very minor change, and technically quite understandable. But it had curious results.
Longtime Outlook users and light mail users liked it.
Longtime Notes users and heavy mail/app users hated it.
Why did the Notes users hate the new window per email? Because they were used to seeing all open windows as tabs in their Notes client. It made everything easy to navigate, as what was Notes stayed in Notes. But DWA starts throwing more and more windows open, making navigation painful when using other apps as well. And if Windows XP collapses the windows on the taskbar into one, now your DWA windows are confused with other apps you may be using in IE.
That's why I include heavy mail/app users as hating it. Whether they hated Notes or not, whether they preferred the look of DWA, they ALL wanted Notes back after less than two weeks of usage because of this.
By contrast, long-time Outlook users and light users were more likely to go for the rightmost, uppermost X on their screen and accidentally close the whole Notes client, losing everything open with obvious frustrations. (This was in the R6.5 days, before Notes 7 put a prompt up.)
Small change, big results.
Document selection is the other one that frustrated. Notes has an unusual selection system within views and folders - it makes it easier to select individual documents manually (you don't hold down CTRL, you click in the selection gutter or use the scroll keys and spacebar). But it makes it harder to select large swathes of documents as it doesn't support the CLICK --> SHIFT+CLICK method. (Until Notes R8, anyway.)
Of course, being implemented in a browser, DWA is the other way around. So those used to selecting apparently disparate (in terms of subject, sender or date) but actually related mails for foldering in Notes found DWA very frustrating. Whereas those coming from Outlook who were used to traditional selection found DWA far more to their liking.
(Funnily enough, the light/heavy divide went was the same here, too! Heavy users hated DWA, light users loved it. I'd like to think I had enough sample data to draw a conclusion, but I'm afraid that with only one implementation and less than two hundred users on this project, I'd rather say it's anecdotal than a hard fact...)
Notes has a rich interface which millions of people worldwide are used to. They're trained in it, or have picked up little tricks in it. If you ripped and replaced it wholesale with a "modern interface", then IBM would have serious problems selling the version after that due to the complaints.
They're aware of this high-wire that they have to balance on, and do employ HCI experts. Check out Mary Beth Raven's blog at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth [ibm.com] - she's the lead product designer for the UI of Notes right now, and agonises - in public, on that blog - about balancing new users versus old users.
Re:Ubuntu 7.0? (Score:2, Informative)