Leadership By Numbers :: Super LightWeight Lotus Symphony

Category Administration Linux Open Source
Lotus Symphony is a cross-platform office suite, which is an advantage if you are looking for a zero-cost, light-weight desktop operating system. Because if you are really thinking of running Lotus Symphony, with its Eclipse-based foundation, on hardware that is of marginal ability, then some of the Linux variants would be a good choice.

Phoronix has a write-up of their analysis of "Power & Memory Usage Of GNOME, KDE, LXDE & Xfce." Interestingly, the LXDE, "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment" really shined, and there are several Ubuntu-based distributions which are built with LXDE. This last week, I tried out WattOS, and as it runs as Ubuntu 9.10, it's possible to install Lotus Symphony from the Ubuntu Partner repository. One click install.

WattOS isn't as sophisticated as MacOSX, Windows 7 or the latest, full, Ubuntu. But, Lotus Symphony on WattOS works quite well and makes it possible to extend the usefulness of a lot of systems that might otherwise be limping.

Technorati Tags: Lotus Symphony, WattOS, LXDE

Comments

2 - Lars, the Eclipse footprint is pretty large for a netbook. I tried the 8.5.1 Notes Client with Ubuntu UNR on a Dell Latitude Netbook. The disk I/O is a bottleneck for the database activity. I'm not looking to goose-up the hardware, but I would consider 2 G minimum RAM, resetting page caching, and reformatting the HD with larger blocks. I think a better choice might be DOLS { Link } , but I haven't had time to set up a test box for Ubuntu. Pretty much, I'm looking to see what the 10.4 release will provide. While I respect RH/Fedora and SuSE, right now Ubuntu has the lead for consumer acceptance. Also, I know that IBM is supporting an improved Android mail client for Domino--that could be a solution.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 08:03:03 PM On 03/10/2010 | - Website - |