IBM Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 2 Is Available For Download (Office Suite)

IBM is working intensively on their free office suite called Lotus Symphony. The current stable version (which we reviewed HERE) is based on an obsolete OpenOffice.org 1 code, but the forthcoming version 3 will use the up to date code of OpenOffice.org 3. Recently, IBM has released the second beta of the new Lotus Symphony 3.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 2 offers a lot of new features, most notable being the support for Visual Basic Macros, OLE Objects, and embedded audio/video as well as delivering business card and label templates commonly used.

If you plan on using the new IBM Lotus Symphony, you'll be glad to know that version 3 beta 2 brings enhanced support for and interoperability with Microsoft Office 2007 files and OpenOffice.org file formats.

Improvements have also been made to: file fidelity, user interface, support for nested tables, presentation masters and Digital Signatures, as well as commonly used features such as comments and DataPilot tables for pivoting on large datasets.


Download IBM Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 2 for Windows, Linux (packages available for openSUSE, RedHat and Ubuntu) and Mac OS X | via abclinuxu.cz


Note for Ubuntu users: don't worry about the package name saying "hardy", it will work on any Ubuntu version (I've tested it on Karmic)!

Trying Out IBM Lotus Symphony Office Suite In Ubuntu Karmic Koala

Not so long ago, IBM teamed up with Canonical to create an application which contains an office suite featuring word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications based on IBM Lotus Symphony, an e-mail client that is based on IBM Lotus Notes, the social networking and collaboration cloud-based tools provided by LotusLive.com and the underlying Ubuntu operating system. Alternatively, companies can opt to use the cloud-based LotusLive iNotes application instead of IBM Lotus Notes.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Canonical CEO, said that:

"Canonical is proud to partner with IBM to help open up the American corporate desktop through Ubuntu. [...] IBM's smart client package running on Ubuntu will allow U.S. organizations the financial freedom to redistribute the costs of expensive software licenses into IT projects that will innovate and drive critical growth."

[via softpedia]

Because of this, I decided to test the IBM office suite called Lotus Symphony. From what I've understood, Symphony is available in Ubuntu Jaunty repositories, but I couldn't find it in Karmic so I downloaded a copy (comes in Ubuntu .deb package) from the IBM website. You can, however, search for in in Synaptic Package Manager if you use Jaunty or older Ubuntu versions.

Download IBM Lotus Symphony [works on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX]

Please note that although the application is free, it does require an account to be able to download it (which is also free). Also, there are no packages available for 64bit.

The package available on the website (version 1.3) was released on September 10, 2009, yet the Ubuntu .deb package name point out that it would be for Ubuntu Hardy Heroen. Don't worry about this, it does work on other Ubuntu versions, as I've just installed it in Ubuntu Karmic Koala (due to be released tomorrow).

After installing IBM Lotus Symphony, you can find it in Application > Office (for Gnome). Upon opening the application, we are presented with an interface which allows us to choose the type of document we want to create: Presentations, Spreadsheet or text Document:

All of these open in tabs, Firefox-style - even if the document types are different. This seems pretty straight forward and intuitive, even useful I might say. But unfortunately, this is where the useful part ends. The Spreadsheet, Presentation and Document interface seems like an old version of Microsoft Office:

But don't get me wrong, competition is always good and OpenOffice will have to prove itself better with something other than the ribbon interface they will offer in version 3.2.

One really strong point of IBM Lotus Symphony office suite is that it opened all the documents created with MS Office I could find on my computer (although I didn't have too many). This includes word processor documents and Power Point presentations.

I do not have a final verdict for IBM Lotus Symphony, but like I said, it does have some pros and cons. I'll test it for a couple of days to see exactly what it can an cannot do.

Note: this post is only my view on things, others might see things differently. What do you think of IBM Lotus Symphony? Have you tried it?

Credits for the idea of this post: ubuntizando el planeta