Matt aka Darwins Theory Blog-A-Rama

Category Linux as a Desktop
Well... Seems I am the only one being caught out.. but just in case it helps someone else.

Firstly credit to Coort to providing virtually all the idea's for this (note he and he borrowed them from notes.net forums).. stolen from http://coort.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/install-lotus-notes-8-beta-3-on-ubuntu-704-feisty-fawn-step-by-step/

If your running Compiz Fusion or Beryl switch back to metacity as the window manager otherwise the install screens are all blank.

Change to switch from DASH to BASH (seems to fix some issues)
sudo ln -sf bash /bin/sh

Download and extract the tar file (You can just do this with the gui)

Run the setup
go to the directory you extracted the files to
sudo ./setup.sh

I just accepted all the defaults except i didn't install Sametime as i'm running it at home.

Set permissions on the program and data directories.
sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/ibm
sudo chmod -R 777 /etc/lotus

(I know this is bad, but i tried 755 and still got issues.. even tried assigning to me as the owner.. still errors..)

Delete the data directory in your home directory (it will be recreated when you launch notes)
sudo rm ~/lotus -r -d

Finally reverse the DASH to BASH thingo
sudo ln -sf dash /bin/sh

Re-enable Beryl or Compiz Fusion.

Finally to get the fonts working properly load Synaptic Package Manager and install "ttf-xfree86-nonfree".. and actually they still sucked so I changed the default fonts in the Notes prefernces to the "FreeSerif, FreeMono.. etc" and now its much nicer.

Now Notes won't appear on the menu's until you either logout or restart, so logout and login and launch Notes.

The errors I was dealing with;

could not launch application
Failed to execute child process
Permission denied

Error
notes setup cannot write or create pernames.ntf

Error no license key found

Hope it helps someone else out...

Matt

PS I'm a complete ubuntu noob, so be gentle...