In an announcement today, Lotus said the Linux client for Notes will be available as a free download for licensed users of Notes Version 7.01 starting July 24. "[The Linux client for Notes is] something that people have really been after us about for a while," said Arthur Fontaine, offering manager for IBM Lotus.

Although a Notes client was available natively for the Unix operating system until about eight years ago, Fontaine said, that product was dropped as Linux gained popularity. Now, with IBM's move to the Eclipse development platform as a basis for many of its products -- including the upcoming Hannover version of Notes -- the decision to build a full-featured Linux desktop client for Notes became a lot easier to do, he said. The client was written using the Eclipse middleware, allowing it to be configured for various operating systems, including Linux, without additional coding.

"The Eclipse layer lets us do it now," Fontaine said. "We're essentially giving the Linux world a down payment for [the upcoming] Hannover" release, due out early next year.

Until now, access to a Linux client for Notes required a plug-in along with Lotus Workplace Managed Client -- a process IBM demonstrated at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo last August in San Francisco. But that method wasn't easy to set up and didn't give users all the features of Notes, Fontaine said.

Using Eclipse as the foundation for the new Linux Notes client "puts all the operating systems on equal footing," Fontaine said. Lotus will also use Eclipse to have its Sametime software ready for Linux by the end of the year, he said.