Dedoimedo takes a look at the IBM Lotus Symphony office suite

Not an easy task. First, you will have to register on IBM site and go through some six different menus until you get to the download page. And then, you might be disappointed to learn that there's only a 32-bit version available. Furthermore, when you start digging for specific versions for your Linux distribution, you may get even more frustrated. For instance, the Ubuntu version, last update: 8.04 Hardy.

When downloading, the default option will be to use an obscure IBM download manager, but you can also choose the standard HTTP method. Both are quite slow and it will take some time before the package drips down to your hard disk.

I decided to try Lotus on a 64-bit Linux machine running Jaunty. The first thing that kind of worried me was how to get the i386 package installed. You will find instructions how to get the 32-bit Lotus running on 64-bit architecture, but the instructions are old and rather irrelevant. Instead, I managed to install the .deb file on a 64-bit machine by using the force flag with dpkg. After the installation, Lotus Symphony powered on well, without major problems or quirks. The Hardy dependency did not come up as an obstacle.

  IBM Lotus Symphony - Weird but good