Category Archives: Linux

eProductivity – FINALLY!

Posted on by

I am a relative novice at Getting Things Done.  No, I don’t mean that I can’t get things done (although lately I have been having procrastinating a bit).  Rather, I’ve read David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done and have been keeping my inbox at zero, which means I have a bunch of things in my Notes ToDos that are my Next Actions and Waiting Fors.  Having them there means they show up on my calendar for the day.  I do a weakly review (stole that from Eric Mack of eProductivity).  I am not on top of things when it comes to doing the weekly review.  I had taken a test drive of the eProductivity template for Lotus Notes that REALLY helps with following the GTD methodology.

I would have bought a full copy of eProductivity, but the price was a little too much for me to justify it for my personal email.  Unfortunately, work hasn’t embraced GTD and eProductivity though eProductivity IS being used by some of those that can make the decision to accept it and offer it.  A month or so ago, the price for eProductivity was altered by offering 4 software levels, each with varying integration and capabilities.  GREAT, I can now afford to buy a copy for home.  But I didn’t want the LOWEST version.  Hmm, what to do?  Procrastinate!  ICA just offered a Thanksgiving deal.  For $139 (just $10 over the lowest level) I could get the Professional level of eProductivity.  SOLD!

So I just downloaded the template, and . . . hmm, where’s Refresh Design on the Linux client?  Guess since there’s no Designer, certain options aren’t there.  DAMN.

No real problem though, just copy the template over to the Windows desktop machine and refresh there.  Works like a charm, replicates up and down and now we’re all on the same page.

Watch here for more on my journey to learn eProductivity and how to Get Things Done.

New life for old laptop

Posted on by

My Gateway M305CRV laptop was just about unusable. Windows XP took forever to close if I did anything more than just boot up and then shutdown.  I had reinstalled XP probably 4 times over the laptop’s lifetime, trying to clean things up.  I was just about to do the reinstall again and decided to take a look at Ubuntu Linux again.  Someone (sorry, don’t remember which Notes geek it was) had talked about a Dell Mini Netbook running Ubuntu.  I figured if it could run on that, I might be able to run on this laptop since the specs were about the same: 1GB RAM, mobile CPU, etc.

I had received Ubuntu 6.X, I think, on CD a few years ago.  I was going to convert my Domino server to Linux and was taking a look at the Ubuntu flavor.  The CDs are still sitting in my office, but since Ubuntu had just released 9.10 Karmic Koala, I decided to start from scratch.

After backing up the few vacation pictures and documents from the laptop, I was ready to give Linux a shot.  Thankfully, I use Lotus Notes, so all my applications were already backed up on the server, and were also replicated on my desktop machine.  I burned the Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit ISO image on a CD and popped it my laptop.  Fired it up and saw I could ‘Test it out’ by running from the CD.  I had fun poking around, but when I tried to connect wirelessly, I found that my wireless card wouldn’t work.  Since it was working fine with Windows, I deduced that the drivers weren’t loading correctly, or weren’t the right ones.  I thought maybe that the driver couldn’t be loaded since I was running from the CD.  I decided that the next night I would take the leap, wipe the drive clean and install Ubuntu.

Ubuntu installed without a hitch.  I was impressed.  I played around again some, and then tried to connect wirelessly.  Nope, no go.  And I had seen the driver loaded.  OK, what now?  AH, I remembered that I had bought a Zonet Wireless card as a replacement when I had problems several years earlier.  A couple minutes of looking in my office and I found the card.  Popped it in, the driver loaded automatically, and CONNECTED!  Now we’re talking!

So it’s been a couple of weeks.  I’ve installed Tweetdeck for managing my Twitter feed, and a couple of other apps.  Today I took a deep breath and attempted to load the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 client.  Lotus doesn’t have the Designer yet for Linux, but I’m hoping that it will be available soon.  The bonus with loading LN8.5.1 is the addition of the Lotus Symphony suite of office products.

I had investigated the installation of 8.5.1 on Ubuntu and saw that Ubuntu 9.10 had broken some things.  I was contemplating reinstalling Ubuntu 8.04 (the last long term support version) but figured I’d just try and follow the directions on installing LN8.5.1 from several sites such as this one by J. Klocke.

It didn’t go as smoothly as I had wanted, since I don’t have those mad Linux skills (have to copy files into the Notes directory and set the file permissions). But I figured it out and in the end have a working Notes client on Linux.

Lotus Knows – we want to work on any OS!