Ubuntu and Lotus Symphony

Hai Feng Zhang, Hai Feng Zhang, Development Manager of Lotus Symphony Install  |  Aug 27, 2008 1:31 AM
Profile image for Hai Feng Zhang Ubuntu is an increasingly popular platform. With the dpkg and Synoptic tools, Ubuntu provides a wonderful install experience of online upgrade of Ubuntu applications by connecting to various Ubuntu application repository servers. Thanks to Canonical's LTS commitment and maintaining DEB packages in repository servers, the upgraded system is extremely stable.

As Ubuntu is getting more and more momentum from Linux community and with its recently released 8.04 LTS, we felt it was time to add platform support for Ubuntu. The development team is working on a DEB installer which conforms to DEB package standard for Ubuntu. Beta support on Ubuntu will be delivered in the next Symphony release which is coming right around the corner.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the Symphony experience on Ubuntu, so please try it out when it's available and let us know what you think. We are committed to making continuous improvement on user experience for all the supported platforms.

Please note that Symphony is a 32-bit application. To run Symphony in 32-bit mode on 64-bits Ubuntu, you will need to install the 32-bit emulation libraries which are not included in the standard Ubuntu distribution. We have listed the steps for adding the libraries in the Symphony FAQ here http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/help.nsf/GeneralFAQ.

17 Comments

  • cool ! said on Aug 28, 2008 1:19 AM:

    I was waiting for it to come on ubuntu .. on windows i found it too heavy and it was hanging, please make it better than office, i hate microsoft. best wishes...

  • Gopal said on Aug 28, 2008 8:09 AM:

    "....next Symphony release which is coming right around the corner." ... Can we have more details please

  • chiron said on Aug 28, 2008 12:50 PM:

    I use OpenOffice daily, will love to try Lotus Symphony when it is available for Ubuntu. The agreement among IBM, RedHat, Novel and Canonical to distribute Lotus+Linux I just heard of is something I was waiting for for years.

  • Wayne said on Aug 29, 2008 3:06 PM:

    Great! I really love the look and feel of Lotus Symphony, my only problem is that has some pretty hefty system requirements, which Open Office doesn't have.

  • Steve said on Aug 30, 2008 1:59 PM:

    Great, just installed Symphony on ubuntu Hardy, it seems to be working fine. I can finally read all my old smartsuite files. Thanks

  • arthur n said on Sep 1, 2008 5:21 AM:

    I love Symphony. Ease of use, interface, layout....

    Just one big issue that makes me hesitate switching from MS Office, which I dislike. It's SLOW! I would be even happy to pay for the suite (less than 100 USD) if the performance is equivalent to other equivalent software suites.

  • MacGyver said on Sep 1, 2008 10:34 AM:

    Would you mind posting something about how the Mac version is coming along?

  • Murat said on Sep 2, 2008 4:25 AM:

    Great news foır ubuntians

  • Gurom said on Sep 2, 2008 4:43 AM:

    YES YES!!!!

    It is nice. I will wait for ubuntus's version of Lotus Symphony.

    Thank you for your job!!!

  • Student said on Sep 3, 2008 4:20 PM:

    Wonderful and very welcome news. Will be glad to give extensive feedback. Thank you for the support!

  • Sturr said on Sep 3, 2008 5:26 PM:

    It is very slow on my system, slower than openoffice, but it looks great.

  • Neale said on Sep 8, 2008 7:48 AM:

    Mmm... How come installing Lotus Symphony isn't available as an Eclipse Update Site... that'd take out the packaging, and I'm very intrigued by the idea of having it running as part of my Eclipse IDE.

    I guess I could try adding the Eclipse update site to File->Application->Install...

    ;-)

  • Gold Coaster said on Sep 21, 2008 10:04 PM:

    Great.

    Look forward to trying Symphony on Ubuntu ver 8.04.

    Vista is bloated and disappointing (Centrino, Core2Duo, 3GB RAM system).

  • Mathew said on Mar 15, 2009 8:04 AM:

    Lotus Symphony - excellent job IBM! I recently switched from M$ to Ubuntu and your office suite is exactly what I need.

  • George said on Aug 27, 2009 8:18 PM:

    I've tried installing Symphony in Linux Mint Gloria (Ubuntu 9.04) both by downloading it from lotus.com, and by installing it from the Ubuntu repositories. In both cases, the install completes without error messages but clicking the icon in the menu doesn't start the application - it shows a Symphony splash screen, then nothing. The few workarounds guides I've found are poorly written and confusing, and I've seen no help for this at lotus.com. It is discussed several times on the Mint forum, but no real resolution.

  • Lusepuster said on Sep 14, 2009 5:09 PM:

    I second George's experience. I installed Lotus Symphony via Apt in Ubuntu Jaunty, and when trying to start it up, it shows a splash and then nothing. I tried launching it from the terminal and got the error message that the license was not accepted, and thr process was stopped. How do I accept the license when I cannot open the app?

  • Mike said on Jun 25, 2010 9:02 PM:

    I'll third the above, 9 months later.... :(

    On Peppermint (a Mint derivative), the debs (v1.6 and v3b3) install great, but I get the license not accepted error Lusepuster reports.

    Help IBM! I loved IBM Symphony on openSuse 11.1.
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