1Christian Henseler  30.08.2010 9:16:38  Notes Client on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I have no knowledge of running Lotus Notes on a Linux client platform at all :-).

I was impressed by a show case of A. Pleschek (sorry for typos) at AdminCamp in the past.

BUT:

What I've seen in the past years is that some customers were thinking about a move to a Linux client platform, but all experiments were gone in the wind meanwhile.

What I am interested in is:

What (kind of) customers are really running a large-scale(!) productive(!) client environment on a Linux client platform as sole client platform.

No plans, no pilots, no intention. Who really did it?

Who is really running it, let's say at least 500 clients, without any Windows emulation as fall back?

Of cause, I know the IBM Open Client initiative, but where is the critical market share?

What is the situation of 3rd party addons for Linux. I doubt there are a reasonable number of tools available for Linux, where vendors provide a Windows or even MAC solution.

For instance, there are no plans for a Admin/Designer client on Linux in the near future.

2Anthony F.  30.08.2010 14:52:49  Notes Client on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Support of a new platform is always a good news : Firefox/Chrome/... for iNotes, Android/Symbian/WM65 for traveler, MacOS/Linux(s) for Notes... Ubuntu is one of most popular distro, so we all should be happy of this new choice !

And now, what about support of Domino 8.5.2 on Ubuntu 10.04 Server LTS ? ;)

3Christian Henseler  30.08.2010 15:34:58  Notes Client on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

@Anthony: Of cause we like to see Notes on as much platforms as possible, but reality is that Notes on Windows != Notes on Linux != Notes on Mac.

For instance, no Notes Shared Login on Linux or Mac, no Admin/Designer on Linux/Mac, etc...

If IBM claims Notes to be multi-platform, all major features should be supported on all platforms.

Otherwise, you are not really free of choice, for instance, you still need a Windows client to administrate your 100 % Linux Domino server and 100% Linux (Notes only) client environment.

But it becomes dangerous, when the major and most important Notes client platform (= MS Windows in my humble opinion) suffers from a strategy, where a lot of platforms are supported, but none for 100%.

I think mobile messaging (on Android/iOS/Symbian/WiMo devices) is a completely different area, but in my point of view, IBM should be more focussed on 1 or 2 strategic client platforms for the Lotus Notes Standard (Eclipse base) client and align functionality and features on these strategic platforms.

4*Daniel Nashed  30.08.2010 23:08:20  Notes Client on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

@Anthony, I think it has been thought about this but every new platform adds costs for QA testing and support.

Ubuntu is a very popular desktop Linux platform. I am not sure how popular Ubuntu is as a server.

From the administrative side SLES and RHEL is much more advanced from what I have seen lately.

Even running CentOS is more flexible. On the client side supporting Ubuntu is very important. I am not sure how many people use the Ubuntu server.

I can understand that for smaller companies using a free distribution would be important.

But if you are using a free version you don't have support anyway (at least from the OS side) and you could also look into CentOS.

The platform and distribution decission is very difficult and I am not totally convinced that Ubuntu Server is the next logical step.

-- Daniel