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."
As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2008 (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been said every year for almost ten years, so can we call it the decade of Linux on the desktop instead?
SmartSuite? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:2, Insightful)
We can only hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Face it, if it will work on Ubuntu, it won't be too hard to coax it into working under [insert favorite distro here], and Linux is sorely missing out on commercial software.
Even though some people will surely say that we should only use the pure, open source software that no large corporation has so much glanced at, there are some jewels of the commercial software world that have no open source equivalent.
Video Editing software, for example; you'd be far better off using one of the many commercial programs than one of the few open source ones.
Having commercial software avaliable for Linux can only help the adoption of Linux on the desktop, and, really, unless you're Steve Ballmer, there is no possible downside to this.
Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Notes always has been excruciatingly sluggish, bloated, and awkward. Putting it on top of eclipse made it that much worse. It feels like molasses on my system. This is working with local replicas of databases (eliminating the slow network) and on a ludicrously overpowered workstation (16 GB RAM, 8 cores, admittedly the hard drive setup is merely a mirror of 500 GB drives, but no other piece of software seems to mind).
I speak not as someone who actually has to use those annoying 'applications' written on the Notes platform by random people (just make a damn webapp people), but as someone who for the most part just needs it as an email client. For those who say 'but it isn't *just* an email client', that may be true, however, a primary function it is intended to fulfill should not be so user-antagonistic. Also, if the core function it means to fulfill with all the developer attention available can't be made pleasant, then it says unfortunate things about the platform.
Re:' can't tell exactly if this is good or bad new (Score:1, Insightful)
Try finding out what version they are complaining about. Odds on it is R5/R6 codestreams which are 8 years old at least. It is a lot like the people go on about Java being slow then basing that argument back in the 1.2/1.3 JVMs.
R8 has Java5 client (with JNI interfaces to NSF stuff), supports widgets/RCP plugins/comp apps and the server supports all the stuff you crave fine like web interfaces, web services, etc. So you don't even need the client to connect to the server except for administration purposes if you wish.
btw. Outlook is not groupware.
The state of Notes today, not 5 years ago. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. If your experience with Notes does not include significant time spent with version 6.5 or later, your experience is as invalid as talking about Apple with your experience limited to using a Mac SE. Move on.
2. 6.5 - 7.0x are largely incremental improvements from an end-user perspective with gains mainly in performance and manageability on both client and workstation. Sure, there are some better UI things in 7.x than 6.5.x but generally they're not earth shattering.
3. 8.0 is the first release built on the Eclipse framework (which IBM calls Expediter), and while it adds a few new features it doesn't really capitalize on that framework much. Its a lot more overhead and represents huge potential but for the most part end users aren't seeing it yet. It also isn't on that many desktops yet. Its too new, and its a
4. 8.0.1 is where you start to see the benefit of running on the eclipse framework from an end user perspective and 8.5 will be a very long overdue blessing and relief for developers.
5. By moving to the Eclipse framework, IBM is now able to deliver full parity on the Macintosh operating systems this year (beta is out there now) as well as full parity on Linux desktops (they'll support Ubuntu, but it will RUN on many).
6. The BIGGEST benefit of moving to the Eclipse framework is that vendors of add-on products and high end developers can now do virtually anything in terms of both UI and FUNCTION up to and including a complete re-skinning of the client. With 8.5 the designer will also be that open. This removes a huge problem for ISV's since day 1. You can't sell a tool for the classic Notes client for real money because your stuck with the same UI available to the crappy code your I.T. department is putting out. No matter how good it is, it looks the same. That's over now. I've already seen amazingly graphical UI approaches from vendors that support graphical representations of data and gesture based controls.
---- now for an opinion or two:
There are only two real competitors in the ENTERPRISE mail and collaboration space. Microsoft (Exchange+outlook+vs.net+sharepoint+communications server+sql server+active directory+IIS) and IBM (Notes+Domino+Sametime). IBM has some variations on that theme as well (Portal - for connecting all that crap you have that doesn't natively talk to your other crap - Quicr, Connections, etc.). If you want enterprise class tools, those two choices represent more than 90% of the market. You can pick the Microsoft stack, in which case you must use all of it, all the time, and upgrade all at once when you upgrade any of it. Linux is totally unsupported, and Mac gets grade-b reluctant support. You can pick the IBM stack and run almost anyone's hardware, operating system, network, and tools or a mixture of all of them.
The IBM stack fully supports both Mac and Linux, and IBM has funded and continues to fund hundreds of full time positions doing all their work on fully open source projects (like Eclipse). What exactly, do you find wrong with that?
You don't like the way it looks? They've opened the UI now. Make it look like anything you want. You can use half a dozen languages to do it.
There are some things that the
Re:Ubuntu 7.0? It will run on (Score:1, Insightful)
a version of Linux.
Yes, it will run on "a version of Linux" but it will be supported for Ubuntu. That is to say, they will probably distribute it as a *.deb package customised to fit into the way Ubuntu is set up.Re:As a regular user of Notes at Work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is a link with some "whats new" information from IBM - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/notes8-new/ [ibm.com]