On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Ryan Ware wrote: > > > > > I'd like some 'real person' reviews on this. I have a client > > simply in love > > with notes, running it on NT4. Trying to get him to try on > > Linux, but need > > some advantages/reasons to throw out there before he'll break > > something that > > works, and sales pitches don't work with this guy. Need real-life > > experiences. :) > > I would have to see a lot of real world results to try Linux over NT, if > I already have NT installed and already payed the licensing fees, > especially if it is working well. Linux is not the answer to > everything, that said I think the only way I would do it as a client is > if I was in some way being limited by NT performance, or if there were > more Notes capabilities with Linux, that I needed. > > Just my 2 cents. If one hadn't already invested in NT, Linux would be a cheaper alternative for obvious reasons. My personal experience is that Domino does run faster (is more responsive) on a Linux box than on an NT box and especially on a 2K box. Linux will run Domino better on less RAM than NT/2K will, so there's your hardware consideration. As far as actual feature benefits, you don't gain much other than you can run PERL or other scripts native and you have added security of your data not being as hackable as it sitting on an NT box. Things you will notice that may be a pain if you're thinking of migrating are only a pain if you're not familiar with Linux and Linux commands. There are however, lots of helpful hints on http://www.notes.net concerning Linux and Domino. Note: make sure you have compatible C/C++ libs as noted in release notes. My company is currently running 4 Domino servers on NT and we've noticed that they really should be restarted every night because of memory leaks, or whatever, but a Domino server on NT never seems very stable for very long. I'm not sure this is Lotus's fault :-) The reason we don't go Linux here is for management purposes. We run a Lotus development shop and we have to access the data sitting at the server a lot, which you cannot do on Linux since there's not a Notes client for X yet (actually, it does run under WINE, but sorta unstable). Everything has to be accessed from a remote client. We also have very illiterate users who on occasion need to access the server console for this or that, and they would simply freak at a Linux prompt. I foresee a day when Linux is our server backbone, but right now we don't have the time to do testing and to switch over. I think as we get new servers, we may incorporate Linux slowly until NT is phased out. It would certainly look good to the boss that we saved those thousands of $ by using Linux. This was more like my $0.03... bit long winded. -J Woz