Linux Intranet Application and Collaboration Software?

_blueboy asks: "I work in IT at a medium-sized Life Sciences company, and we are in the process of developing an intranet. As one of the primary developers, I have been involved in evaluating both development and server software. We are currently using an all Microsoft setup but it has proven to be very finicky, unreliable, and unpredictable. Our director is currently evaluating Domino R5 but several of us would like to move to Linux and Apache. Our director likes the idea that Notes & Domino form a "complete package". I know that Lotus is planning to ship Notes & Domino for Linux soon. Does anyone have any experience with the Lotus software and how well would it likely run on Linux? Are there any similar packages for *nix/apache or any companies that might provide a similar custom built solution? It is essential that the software be able to provide us with easy and reliable document sharing/collaboration tools for a Windows network. "

Comments

a couple of options

[tweek]

Twig

and


Horde/Imp

These guys are great for webmail, calendering and contact management.
A good forum type app would be Sporum. They are all freely distributable and only require IMAP (not a problem on an Intranet),mysql and perl. Twig uses php as well. All of these are fairly easy to set up (especially with php as a DSO in apache). I've set up all 3 on our intranet as evaluating a few options. They are all easily customizable. Any combination of these with a couple of hacks and snips here and there and you have your own web based groupware. =)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece

The Lotus/Linux Development Environment

[PackedBowl]

I work at a small but rather high-profile consulting company, doing both design and admin/support. We're a M$, IBM and Lotus partner company, so we end up working a lot in multi-platform, multi-this, multi-that environments, and even though Domino is scoffed sometimes by database-minded folks as "flat" and difficult, it is a life-saver for long-term evolving situations (the secret being that this is MOST places...), because data can be indexed and worked with in ways M$ and many other vendors have never dreamed of dealing with. [What I'm skipping here is a dissertation on why the word "Workgroup" strikes fear into the folks in Redmond, because they KNOW they are 5 years behind according to current development models, and why its so often overlooked by the shrink-wrap software world in general, but I digress...]

The question, then, is given that Lotus is so much better entrenched in the corporate development landscape, what IBM and its daughter company, Lotus/Iris, will do with Linux and vice versa. IBM is farther into Linux than I think a lot of /.'ers might think.... Linux will probably running on the S390 mainframes and RS/6000's midranges (and maybe who knows what this will do to the AS/400 world???) within 18 months. And mix this into the sales push of Windows 2000 next year, with its plethora of bugs and outrageous hardware req's.... wow! Domino and the new R5 client is a blow to M$ companies which have come to realize that they don't want their network infrastructure being designed from the desktop up and out; rather, they need integrated environments with sophisticated replication and access that a PC-centric model does not provide. Companies line-up to hear about the power of Domino/R5... and when you mention that they can subtract the NT or Solaris license fees....

This is the vector by which a large number of Linux hosts will infect the corporate bioms, in addition to the Apache/Linux combo. The crucial thing to observe, though, is how the linux philosophy might infiltrate into the halls of Iris (the dev. half of Lotus). Right now, the folks at Iris could really care less about Linux -- papa IBM came down and told them to port to yet another Unix... big deal, they say. (there no way in HELL domino is going open source... not yet) But if the number of Domino servers increases because of Linux, then 2001 or 2002 will see headline stories talking about the Sun development model paralleled with the Iris dev. model...

Linux will not take over the world by winning the desktop -- and it doesn't need to. The flow of the Linux meme into the IBM world is the most significant thing to have happened in the computer world since the advent of the PC. IF you are in the midst of deciding how to built a dynamic enterpise right now, you don't care whether the Linux philosophy is better than some particular companies product... but if you take one of the BEST development environments around and set it on top of Linux, then you know that no matter WHAT happens in the computer world in the next 5 years, you will be guaranteed to be position to pick and choose the best-of-breed options, whether they are open source, gnu, or proprietary.

To specifically answer the original post: I've installed and run the Linux version of Domino, and if you know anything about Domino, its EXACTLY the same on every platform it runs on (OS/400, NT, Solaris, AIX, etc...) By Q#2 2000, Linux Domino will be stable and ready to starting crushing Exchange/SQL Server setups... and don't forget about DB2 for Linux when Domino needs extra horsepower. This combo could be the smartest path an IS manager could make next year.