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Lotus Notes 8.5 Will Support Ubuntu 7.0
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."
Amazing how many news outlets repeat the "7.0" typo.
Of course it should read "7.10" as in october 2007.
But et tu Slashdot!?
Lotus notes... this may spell the end of Ubuntu being considered "User Friendly" as Lotus Notes drags it kicking and screaming to the ground.
New tag - deathofubuntu?
Despite the facts that Lotus is or isn't a good product... let's face it, Lotus Notes is a major player in the enterprise, and this can drive some important migrations to Linux.
6.5 was made back in 2003. Of course it is better. Most of the FUD being spouted is from people using older versions of Notes, or having to use applications written by people not qualified to write them (mainly because it is as easy to write as VB). Or worse still they spend all that money and only use it for email.
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.
Of course 'support for Ubuntu' doesn't mean it won't run on random distro X. It might, but IBM won't recommend it/install it/support it for you. Which is fine if you want to do it all yourself. Most enterprises, however, are used to paying IBM (/Microsoft) a lot of money and not having to worry about support issues.
IBM, by the way, isn't supporting just one distro. They have various forms of support for various distros for their products. Their overall strategy seems quite simple; on the one hand, support the distros people ask for, on the other, keep that number a reasonable size. By which I mean, IBM doesn't want a single vendor (Microsoft sort of taught IBM a lesson there), but also IBM doesn't want too many vendors, which is hard to support and market. Simply put, that means we should expect IBM products to be supported on Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE. No surprises; these are the major distros these days (and for a few years now, too).
AFAIK, being a Notes-user for many years and having a good relation with IBM, they already do support SuSE and Redhat... Ubuntu is just the next distro getting certified Notes support. ;-)
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No, Notes doesn't suck... Notes is just different... but then, so is Linux.
Facts first:
.0 release.
/. community just looks like a bunch of sheep being led around without thought on. This is one of those knee-jerk reaction topics. Bitching about Notes from years past is about as easy as declaring "First Post" -- and about as useful.
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
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm running Ubuntu 4+3i right now, the real part works pretty smoothly but the imaginary part has some strange interactions with virtualization. I think it's just too complex for most desktop users.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Actually Lotus Notes is light years ahead of Outlook/Exchange, but of course that doesn't say much because Outlook isn't very good groupware to begin with. The thing that people don't realize is that Lotus Notes is a fantastic rapid application development product. I can make a groupware application in 30 minutes that would take 6 months to a year to do in Outlook/Exchange/.NET and it still would not have the features of the notes application, for example: Integrated search in every view, Integrated replication, Easy customization, Every application is also a web application, Integrated logging, Integrated access control down to a field level, Integrated Offline capabilites and so on.
I'll admit that the email client that comes with Lotus Notes is not very good, but that is not because Notes is not very good, it's just that the IBM developers that create the email client are not very good developers, it would be possible to have the email client look exactly like Outlook.
But since Notes comes with POP and IMAP support out of the box, you can always just use the email client of your choice.