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:

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]