Linux and Lotus Notes

Hi all.

I was wondering about something, hopefully you can help me out.

I intend to start using Linux, however I find it difficult getting in to it.

To really "force" myself to use it I want to install it at work. (I'm a systems administrator). To get me started I now use Knoppix instead of a complete installation so I don't have to get rid of my Windows installation yet.

The only problem I can't seem to get around is the fact that we use Lotus Notes for a lot of things in our company. It's our main e-mail client, but also for example our call systems is a Notes database. I obviously can use the webmail interface for my e-mail, but this is far from ideal.

Is there a way to use Lotus Notes under Linux? And if so, would it also work under Knoppix? (since you can't install any software then, can you?)

Thanks for any tips.

You can use Wine to emulate Windows Apps on Linux. A quick check of their Apps list indicates some varying success. I suppose it could work under Knoppix but if Knoppix doesn't have Wine installed you may have to go dual boot (both Windows and Linux on the same machine). One of the things that has always made me wonder about Notes is why they released only a linux server but no client option.

BTW, you might want to investigate VMWare which allows you to run Linux at the same time as Windows (requires more RAM but can be helpful if you don't want to do a complete switch yet).

And, you may also want to check out Cross Office, which I found to be a little more user friendly when it comes to bring Windows Apps to Linux. It would appear that Lotus is up there for Application support along with iTunes. Not a perfect solution but might be a good bridging option. :)

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[You can use Wine to emulate Windows Apps on Linux.

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take a look here http://www.developer.ibm.com/tech/fa...al?oid=2:25424 for some (kinda old) info about how to use wine and lotus notes client

Lotus notes server is able to serve IMAP clients. If setup like that, you can use Thunderbird or any of the "regular" linux email clients.

Thanks all for your help so far!

I had already looked into VMWare, however I couldn't get Linux to run under it. Don't know why. It installed fine, but after the reboot it kept hanging in the "BIOS". I tried Mandrake 9, 10 and Red Hat 7. Same with OpenBSD.

Wine sounds like a good option, but I'll have to make my pc dual boot then... Finding out how to use the program will probably be a bit to much "in between activities" at work. Maybe I can set something up at home. (I have a spare P3-450, so it runs kinda slow)

Using IMAP would be a great solution... I'll try and see what I can do with that.

Thanks again for all your responses so far.

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Wine sounds like a good option, but I'll have to make my pc dual boot then...

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Not necessarily. Cross Office helps to completely avoid that.

If you just want to get the hang of *nix commandline and the commands, cygwin may be an option too.