I love Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino. Even if it's not free and open source software, it's a highly integrated groupware without comparable software solutions on the market.
With Lotus Notes 8.5, IBM offers -for the first time ever- Debian installation packages. According to IBM, Ubuntu will be fully supported for the release of 8.5.
Thanks to the new DEB-packages, installation is really easy. Right now, there are some minor issues with fonts selection.
1) Register an IBM ID.
2) Download the installation packages archive.
Install all packages:
tar xf notes85_notes_linux_deb_prod.tar
cd notes85_notes_linux_deb_prod
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
After you've successfully installed Lotus Notes, check out OpenNTF, which is a great source for some really useful FOSS Lotus Notes databases.
The availability of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino is a substantial progress for the Ubuntu Project. There are thousands of business applications available for Lotus Notes. This eases migration from Microsoft Windows and offers a great value to Linux on the desktop.
I'm still missing the Lotus Notes Designer. Keep on working IBM!
[Thanks to Volker Weber for providing the relevant link]
