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I downloaded the 200+ MB looking forward to test it on Debian Etch.
It doesn't install !!
Actually, it seems to fail the install except on the SLED 10, RHEL 5, Redhat5 mentioned in the FAQ.
This behaviour is known:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/supportThread.jspa?messageID=4437&#4437

Don't forget that IBM have recently announced its own version called Lotus Symphony:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa if your interested in the download for Linux and 32 bit windows.
It's free and based on Star Office/Open Office and is ODF compliant.
All you have to do is to register your organization with IBM and download it.

I wonder if they distribute CD versions?

Better articles w/ links:
News.com
The Guardian (Blog)
CNN Money
ZDNET

And also, actual Lotus Symphony page on IBM's site, with download link.

Lotus Symphony Documents supports .doc (Microsoft), .dot (Microsoft template), .odt (ODF), .ott (ODF template), .sxw (IBM Lotus Symphony native format), .stw (IBM Lotus Symphony native format template), .lwp (IBM Lotus SmartSuite®), .mwp (IBM Lotus SmartSuite template), .rtf, and .txt formats

Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets supports .xls (Microsoft), .xlt (Microsoft template), .ods (ODF), .ots (ODF template), .sxc (IBM Lotus Symphony native format), .stc (IBM Lotus Symphony native format template), .123 (IBM Lotus Smartsuite), .12m (IBM Lotus Smartsuite template), .xml, and .csv formats

Lotus Symphony Presentations supports .ppt (Microsoft), .pot (Microsoft template), .odp (ODF), .otp (ODF template), .prz (IBM Lotus Smartsuite), .mas (IBM Lotus Smartsuite look template), .smc (IBM Lotus Smartsuite content template), .sxi (IBM Lotus Symphony native format), and .sti (IBM Lotus Symphony native format template)

I don't know.. Here's what I'm looking at:

Lotus word processor (ugly tables and charts, and the fabulous "Star" clipart. Definitely "retro"): http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_wpe.jspa

AbiWord screenshots (simple and clean): http://www.abisource.com/screenshots/

Apple iWork08 'Pages' (fancy page layout): http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/

* Lotus Symphony supports both Microsoft Windows® and Linux® platforms.

Note: Be sure your system meets these client system requirements:

* Supported Windows platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista
* Supported Linux platforms: SLED 10, RHEL 5, Redhat5
* 900MB disk space minimum
* 1GB RAM memory minimum
* US English locale

Considering that it's currently available for download here, that covers free as in beer. As for free as in freedom, I can't say, I don't see the source code there anywhere.

Lotus Symphony Page Its still the first beta so its probably a bit rough and you need an IBM ID to download it (freely available).

(AC to prevent Karma whoring)

Lotus notes looks so much better than openoffice 2.3
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_wpe.jspa documents
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_pe.jspa presentations
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_sse.jspa spreadsheets
hopefully this can help eat into Microsoft's market share in the office world.

Lotus notes looks so much better than openoffice 2.3
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_wpe.jspa documents
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_pe.jspa presentations
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_sse.jspa spreadsheets
hopefully this can help eat into Microsoft's market share in the office world.

Lotus notes looks so much better than openoffice 2.3
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_wpe.jspa documents
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_pe.jspa presentations
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/product_ss_sse.jspa spreadsheets
hopefully this can help eat into Microsoft's market share in the office world.

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa

Looks like its a modified version of OpenOffice. I doubt it will share anything more than the name with the old Lotus Symphony.

Oh, and FYI, OpenOffice is a re-branded StarOffice, not the other way around.

see http://symphony.lotus.com/

(less or more) rebranded lotus productivity tools -> ooo1.3 bloated into eclipse with some eyecandy.

It looks like it is actually available for download here

IBM Lotus Symphony, download for Win32 and Linux.

Does anyone remember Lotus Manuscript? Now THAT was some word processor. A recent access of nostalgia made me discover it is still available (http://www2.support.lotus.com/ftp/pub/desktop/Man uscript/). I've switched to vim and LaTeX in the meantime, but I guess it still beats the crap out of modern day WYSIWYG utilities.

and suggest a (gasp!) commercial solution. Not free, but supported: Sametime. Commercially supported by IBM/Lotus, fully secure, with a built-in web conferencing system, and works on your Windows 2003 server. Can be completely stand-alone, or you can have it authenticate to your company's LDAP directory. The nice thing is you buy only the number of clients you need, with no need to purchase server software. Clients are $47.59/user, and allows you to use the stand-alone Sametime Connect client (Windows, Mac or a Trillian Pro plugin), the browser-based chat client, or connect via your Blackberry if you're already using their Enterprise server 4.1 or later.

Gotta chime in on this one. Lotus is by far the strongest collaborative platform available with products range from the Notes/Domino to Quickplace (hidden gem)and Sametime.

I work in a Domino shop (with good programmers) and its frankly amazing how far the platform can be pushed.
Think of it this way. Each Notes user is sitting there with a secure client for accessing any apps they need, whether they are native Domino, or plugged in to another system (SAP, Peoplesoft etc). The path forward will make this even easier.

The way ahead looks good with IBMs approach to making Notes a plug-in the their next-gen Eclipse-based platform. Existing Domino apps will run and the "client" will be fully extensible.
Sametime 7.5 looks killer.
I think one of IBMs major issues is marketing and personally am glad they are taking it seriously under Sarjit and Mike Rhodin's leadership. The "Gloves are off" campaign is a good start.

Product naming is another issue. Lotus's offering that competes with Sharepoint is called "Workplace Services Express". WTF does that mean? Who's ever heard of that product? (It's pretty neat by the way).
There's a good Ed Brill presentation that I'd suggest you see called "The Boss Loves Microsoft". Failing that you can at least download the slides (pdf 7.5mb). http://www.edbrill.com/storage.nsf/00d4669dcd9456a 386256f9a0056e956/42cf7602df53917586257108000261d8 !OpenDocument
You can watch the 2006 Lotusphere opening session webcast here in rm or wmv format http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/events/go vfor.nsf/wdocs/generalsessionwebcast/. The Sametime 7.5 and Hannover (Notes 8) parts are good.
My advice is to skip through the Jason Alexander into..it's pretty lame. Slides about Hannover and beyond are available here http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/sandbox.nsf/ByDateNJ/0 317040CF37680FD8525711F0061CB5F/$FILE/Lotusphere%2 0INV101%20January%202006.pdf?OpenElement Even if you hate Lotus, check some of the above out.
It pays to know your enemy ;-)

Found a FLASH DEMO.. ftp://ftp.lotus.com/pub/lotusweb/workplacecollabor ation/WorkplaceCollaborationServices_Tour.html/

The keynote is available at the Sametime Forum.
The Sametime part kicks in at page 31ish.

Ed Brill also has some stuff up (including the sametime song).

• Adobe Systems
• IBM
• Intel
• Novell
• Sun Microsystems

Ok, first of all:

Please God, Apple, DO NOT RELEASE NOTES: http://lotus.com/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/notes homepage

However, an app like, I dunno, "Bass Clef" or something might be useful. ;)

But I want more is a replacement for Excel to go along with Pages and Keynote. With, uh, "Numbers", I could do everything on my Mac without giving a dime to Microsoft.

It's called IBM Lotus Sametime.

I think the biggest thing lacking with IM seems to be the lack of a corporate tool for IM.

What are you talking about? Microsoft offers a corporate IM server called Live Communications Server. IBM offers Lotus Sametime. Apple even has one built into OS X Server 10.4. There are also other companies that offer corporate/enterprise instant messaging solutions, so the server and clients are run in-house.

~Philly

Other Options to Consider:

Novell:
Linux Small Business Suite
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxsmallbiz/
It includes edirectory, groupwise for email, suse enterprise server,Novell ZENworks Linux Management Client

IBM (Lotus)
http://www.lotus.com/lotus/general.nsf/wdocs/nd7co ntent
You can use Domino as an ldap server.
Other IBM Software on Linux:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/os/linux/software/
or
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/matrix/

It's interesting how PHP is 'complete junk', yet you have not named any closed-source software that's better.

There are (and have been for some time) component-based frameworks for web development that show PHP for the crap that it is. These days, ASP.NET (see http://webui30.componentart.com/ for example components) and JSF (see http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htd ocs/partners/addins/exchange/jsf/doc/tagdoc/core/i mageIndex.html for example components) look to be taking over, but Apple Webobjects has been around for some time. These are giant fully-tested and documented frameworks.

Oh, and I like how you admit that Linux (at least as a server) and Apache are both better than any alternatives for what they do, yet assert that it's a commerical organization that have made them this way. That is just flat-out wrong, and a trivial knowledge of the timeline of those projects would have shown that.

Linux was a hobby OS and used only in small-time hosting operations before the big companies got involved. Perhaps you should reexamine the timeline. Apache only took off early because it was the upgrade path from NCSA httpd, which was the original standard. From there, many companies have been providing support through the ASF.

What's the best mail server?

Pick any big company's mail solution (aside from Microsoft's), and you'll find something that's more managable, more scalable, better documented, and more featureful than anything the open source world can offer. Examples: http://www.lotus.com/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/d ominohomepage and http://www.oracle.com/collabsuite/feature_email.ht ml

What's the best software firewall? I'm sorry, but I don't read up on firewall software very often, but I'm sure it's no different from my other examples.

IBM Workplace Messaging

I haven't actually used it yet, so I can't say if it's any better than Notes.

I have to agree. It might not be popular with the slashdot crowd, but Lotus Notes/Domino is quite robust, extremely secure, and offers an immense amount of functionality outside of just e-mail and calendaring. Sometime midway through the R5 codestream, it's web interface for mail became world class, and the Domino server will run on Windows, Linux, AS400, AIX, etc.

It's an extremely mature product, now at version 7 (http://www.lotus.com/lotus/general.nsf/wdocs/nd7c ontent). There's a huge install base, and you should be able to easily find a number of IBM business partners and consultants that can get you on the right path. Speaking of the right path... I would recommend you avoid IBM Global Services. They pay poorly and no longer attract the talent they used to. Their administrators also tend to drag their feet on upgrades. YMMV.

Good luck!

IBM / Lotus Domino sounds like a good fit. Supports webmail, POP3 and IMAP out of the box, servers are extremely reliable if administered properly. Scalable, supports clustering (and real clustering, not like Exchange). Runs on Linux, Windows, and big iron from IBM. Sounds pretty much like what you're looking for, since you didn't say "free".

Since IBM and Sun don't write word processing software anymore

Both are current products even if they don't get much shelf space or press attention.

Since IBM and Sun don't write word processing software anymore (AFAIK)

Really? *cough*SmartSuite*cough*StarOffice*cough*

I think its more likely that the patent is targeted at the various free word processing programs.

I don't think it's actually *targeted* at anything. Targeting something with a patent would imply that the feature exists. (Which would invalidate the patent.) Instead, Microsoft is simply building a large portfolio. The idea is that if they cast a large enough net, they can eventually threaten any would-be attacker with hundreds of vague claims. While none of them would probably hold up in court, the claims would tie things up for long enough to bankrupt or entirely block the attacker.

"if 123 had survived what would it have looked like by now?"

Maybe
like this?

My advice, IBM Lotus Domino products. It's the most powerful, flexible, and comprehensive tool out there. Technically, it's a software development platform for collaboration and messaging. But there's a subset of tools called "Quickplace" which includes out-of-the-box features that I think would be perfect for you.

From the IBM Quickplace site:
* Provides anytime, anywhere access to collective knowledge, information-sharing, tasks and team calendar events whether on-line or disconnected.
* Seamlessly establishes a working community with a sense of accountability, whether team members are centralized or geographically dispersed.
* Increases team productivity and efficiency by virtualizing asynchronous collaboration processes, and optionally integrates them with real time.
* Increases responsiveness among colleagues, customers, business partners and suppliers by facilitating instant formation of working teams -- whether team members reside within or beyond the organization.
* Facilitates faster, collective decision making by centralizing timely and accurate information, and granting all team members equal opportunity to review and react.
* Helps make your teams more productive and self-sufficient through easy, instant assembly of collaborative applications using team space templates -- with just a browser.


I've been using it for years, and I still haven't found anything I can't get it to do. Note that it's not for transactional systems (airline ticket systems) and it's not a relational database system (which is a plus!), but it's just perfect for what you described...

My email is shown here at Slashdot (thank you SpamCop), so please feel free to email any questions you might have and I'd be happy to help. I'm not a consultant and I'm busy anyway, so I can't build you a system or anything (this is not a pitch:), but I would be happy to field any questions you have (I have about 10 years experience with Domino).

Don't miss the developerWorks site for Domino (plenty of info), and feel free to ask questions in the forums (it's a friendly group!).

My advice, IBM Lotus Domino products. It's the most powerful, flexible, and comprehensive tool out there. Technically, it's a software development platform for collaboration and messaging. But there's a subset of tools called "Quickplace" which includes out-of-the-box features that I think would be perfect for you.

From the IBM Quickplace site:
* Provides anytime, anywhere access to collective knowledge, information-sharing, tasks and team calendar events whether on-line or disconnected.
* Seamlessly establishes a working community with a sense of accountability, whether team members are centralized or geographically dispersed.
* Increases team productivity and efficiency by virtualizing asynchronous collaboration processes, and optionally integrates them with real time.
* Increases responsiveness among colleagues, customers, business partners and suppliers by facilitating instant formation of working teams -- whether team members reside within or beyond the organization.
* Facilitates faster, collective decision making by centralizing timely and accurate information, and granting all team members equal opportunity to review and react.
* Helps make your teams more productive and self-sufficient through easy, instant assembly of collaborative applications using team space templates -- with just a browser.


I've been using it for years, and I still haven't found anything I can't get it to do. Note that it's not for transactional systems (airline ticket systems) and it's not a relational database system (which is a plus!), but it's just perfect for what you described...

My email is shown here at Slashdot (thank you SpamCop), so please feel free to email any questions you might have and I'd be happy to help. I'm not a consultant and I'm busy anyway, so I can't build you a system or anything (this is not a pitch:), but I would be happy to field any questions you have (I have about 10 years experience with Domino).

Don't miss the developerWorks site for Domino (plenty of info), and feel free to ask questions in the forums (it's a friendly group!).

My advice, IBM Lotus Domino products. It's the most powerful, flexible, and comprehensive tool out there. Technically, it's a software development platform for collaboration and messaging. But there's a subset of tools called "Quickplace" which includes out-of-the-box features that I think would be perfect for you.

From the IBM Quickplace site:
* Provides anytime, anywhere access to collective knowledge, information-sharing, tasks and team calendar events whether on-line or disconnected.
* Seamlessly establishes a working community with a sense of accountability, whether team members are centralized or geographically dispersed.
* Increases team productivity and efficiency by virtualizing asynchronous collaboration processes, and optionally integrates them with real time.
* Increases responsiveness among colleagues, customers, business partners and suppliers by facilitating instant formation of working teams -- whether team members reside within or beyond the organization.
* Facilitates faster, collective decision making by centralizing timely and accurate information, and granting all team members equal opportunity to review and react.
* Helps make your teams more productive and self-sufficient through easy, instant assembly of collaborative applications using team space templates -- with just a browser.


I've been using it for years, and I still haven't found anything I can't get it to do. Note that it's not for transactional systems (airline ticket systems) and it's not a relational database system (which is a plus!), but it's just perfect for what you described...

My email is shown here at Slashdot (thank you SpamCop), so please feel free to email any questions you might have and I'd be happy to help. I'm not a consultant and I'm busy anyway, so I can't build you a system or anything (this is not a pitch:), but I would be happy to field any questions you have (I have about 10 years experience with Domino).

Don't miss the developerWorks site for Domino (plenty of info), and feel free to ask questions in the forums (it's a friendly group!).

Please, when you are bashing Lotus Notes, if it's the mail client you have issue with, try to state that. Saying you don't like Lotus Notes is like saying you had a bad experience with a car you owned in college, therefor all cars suck !

If you don't like the mail client, use Outlook instead, the servers have IMAP and POP.
If your apps suck, thank a developer (I guess if a VB app you used once sucked, that would mean all computers suck or something?).
Red Box of Death ? Try moving to a version from this MILLENNIUM !

Letsee, I remember distinctly years ago when LoveBug virus hit, everyone was down but the Notes folks... the UI may not be exactly like Microsoft (which is why I think many of you don't like it, it's not Windows:) but the "mail" is robust and secure enough that it doesn't get viruses, you can restore a single user or many (Exchange 2k3 just recently got that I think), and the PKI security is enough that the CIA, FBI, NSA and other TLOs have to use it. Or, if you prefer, you can authenticate using LDAP (even to Active Directory) and even BE the LDAP authentication server for other apps.

Sure, the next argument is that small little 8 person companies don't need the level of security, failover, extensibility, etc. that an enterprise environment requires... That's true, but they don't want Exchange and the overhead it requires either.


A special note to the consultant or whomever in another posting here - *you* haven't converted any shops to Notes lately (and you are The World???) - but the net turnover last year was almost 1500 big shops switching from Microsuck to Lotus (next time research before you slam). Check out the recent case studies if you like.

For those folks that care, you should know that Lotus Notes isn't email software - email is like 10% of what it does... Lotus is workflow applications, web applications, blogs, middleware and integration, document management, presence awareness (Lotus Sametime IM is #1 in the Fortune 500). And let's not forget, they support open standards more than anyone, period (you would think OSS folks would get this???) If you want you data in XML, you got it... with Microsuck you get their closed version. You can have an app server that runs Domino, attaches to MySQL, output pages using Perl and PHP... anything you want really (simply put, it's incredibly extensible).

Platforms ? You can run it on Windows, AIX, Solaris, z/OS, iSeries, o yeah, they even have a version FOR LINUX, RedHat and UnitedLinux certified ! (where's Exchange for Linux?).

Check it out for yourself.

M$'s "Exchange" isn't a centralized solution per se- it depends on all the other M$ crap working together. Notes can stand alone, and IT RUNS ON Linux !

I hope IBM Keeps maintaining Notes, but I have an ugly feeling that they're going to let it obsolete and be replaced with... a general mess of loosely cooperative stuff that /. ers will just loove making tons of money playing with. Oh well.

PS- I don't think you're a troll- you just suffered with bad implementations, like everyone else. You know the drill- you can write spaghetti code in any language

Note to IBM: MAKE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE WORK FIRST!!!

IBM uses the cloudscape database as backend to a lot of products like Worksphere Portal.
They normally recomend DB2 for production but one of the latest products "Workplace Services Express" can only be used with the embedded Cloudscape.

The product is intended for SMB and scales upto 1000 users. And this is for Groupware/Document storage etc. http://www.lotus.com/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/w orkplaceservicesexpresshome/

IBM will not port the Notes client to Linux. The strategic direction for the "thick" client that is Notes today, is something based on Eclipse, which has been announced as the IBM Workplace Client. That is what the Lotus division is selling now, and it's what IBM's internal users will get, sooner or later, to replace the Notes client.
And of course it will run on Linux.

Until IBM ports Lotus Notes to Linux and starts using it, anything they say about the Linux desktop should be absolutely ignored.

It's called iNotes. It is officially supported under Linux too. Check out the spec page. Retargeting large pieces of software is not something that happens over night. This is the direction that Lotus is supposedly heading though.

There are internal deployments of iNotes too. However, notes under wine works so well for me that I doubt I'd switch anytime soon...

Now there is only office for 300 dollars, and you get MS(doesn't)works free w/ a new pc

Unfortunately, you are badly uninformed.

But hey, why let facts stop some good FUD?

...replacement for Exchange Server, with all of the functionality...Microsoft will continue to own the groupware arena.

PLEASE!! M$ Exchange is NOT a groupware. Obviously, you have not seen or even used a true groupware.

Don't you find it disgusting that Lotus Notes client is one of the top 25 voted for apps? IBM makes millions if not billions off of Linux, yet when it comes to porting what they claim to be the market leader in enterprise email and collaboration they do nothing? WTF!?!?! Granted, the Notes client sucks right now compared to the main usability features you get in MS Outlook right now. But you'd think that getting a good workgroup app for linux would be an important step for getting desktop linux running. Though IBM may not be concerned with linux on the desktop or desktops in general for that matter anymore.

Question:
Where are you going to find investors when you offer that kind of return?
Seriously, IBM already has an Office Suite, SmartSuite. They charge $$$ for it. We get it free with our StinkPads and don't use it. Why?

Well looking at how well IBM has pushed OS/2, Notes, 1-2-3 and Ami-Pro, which was only like the best Word Processor EVAR, they've shown they can't manager Software. Why rely on stuff that won't be around and isn't compatible with anything?

Novells^WSCOs record isn't much better.

1) Desktop machines can use Mac OSX (Mail.app, Microsoft Entourage, Lotus Notes)

2) Servers can be Solaris, OS/400, Linux ( Lotus Domino) or FreeBSD

Mac OSX by default is much more locked down than XP. Forget using any version of Windows prior to 2000. I don't like the idea of allowing my users to shoot themselves in the foot. Both servers and client should be locked down, with the server having a few extra levels of protection if its going to be the backbone of your operations.

1) Desktop machines can use Mac OSX (Mail.app, Microsoft Entourage, Lotus Notes)

2) Servers can be Solaris, OS/400, Linux ( Lotus Domino) or FreeBSD

Mac OSX by default is much more locked down than XP. Forget using any version of Windows prior to 2000. I don't like the idea of allowing my users to shoot themselves in the foot. Both servers and client should be locked down, with the server having a few extra levels of protection if its going to be the backbone of your operations.

Okay, Ive had discussions with the @stake folks before, I'm glad they finally cashed out. Please note that my email is roughly the same in this discussion from back in 1998. (see above). They never really had the knack for security then, who knows what they do now.

Okay, Ive had discussions with the @stake folks before, I'm glad they finally cashed out. Please note that my email is roughly the same in this discussion from back in 1998. (see above). They never really had the knack for security then, who knows what they do now.