Recently, at Lotusphere '99 in Berlin, Lotus announced the second release of the software, Sneak Preview II (SPII), which has fixed several of the problems associated with the initial version. What scares many people away from taking the plunge and trying SPII out is the steep learning curve associated with Linux, especially if your interest is Domino-on-the-platform rather than the platform itself. This article shows you how to install and setup SPII on a spare PC in less than one hour, with no Linux knowledge. From there you can explore and decide whether you want to invest further time in learning Linux as a Domino platform. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Of course, if you're already a Linux wizard, you're already halfway home.

Things you need to have first
Since you don't get the Notes/Domino client or administration software with SPII, you are obliged to have at least two PCs available and connected via TCP/IP: one with the client and administrator installed, the other the target for Linux.

Moving on, the target box must be a Pentium class machine with at least 64 MB of RAM (128 MB is recommended) and 1 GB of disk storage. We used a retired P200 workstation with a 2 GB disk and upgraded it to 96 MB of RAM.

On the software side you need a copy of a Linux distribution. RedHat 6.0 works out of the box so this is a good choice if you don't have a strong opinion either way. We used Mandrake Linux, which is based on RedHat 6.0, from The Linux Emporium (at http://www.linux-emporium.co.uk/). This distribution costs the princely sum of £2 or US$3.25 (CD only).

You also need a copy of the Notes/Domino server software, either downloaded as a tar file from Notes.Net or on CD from Lotus. If you download it and you don't have a fast link, you might find it drops out on you halfway. A tip here is to have a word with your local ISP and see if they'll do it for you for a nominal fee. Another idea is to install GetRight (available from http://getright.com/). This nifty program is quite stubborn about downloads -- it restores failed downloads and keeps working at it until the entire file is on your hard drive.