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Lotus 1-2-3 for Linux
- turtleyacht 3y ago> article documenting how it is possible here https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html From there, a site to someone who was > a sysop [system operator] in the 90s BBS [Bulletin Board Service] scene https://scenelist.org/ https://scenelist.org/
- sramsay 3y ago> article documenting how it is possible here Best line on that page: "It’s an exciting time in the Lotus 1-2-3 enthusiast community – that was a joke, there is no enthusiast community, it’s just me!"
- gattilorenz 3y agoYeah, the humour of the author is pretty enjoyable. The tool written to redefine symbols in a COFF file is called "coffsyrup" :) https://github.com/taviso/123elf/blob/main/coffsyrup.c https://github.com/taviso/123elf/blob/main/coffsyrup.c
- HeckFeck 3y agoThis is beyond impressive. I wish my hacking skills stretched as far as resurrecting dead software on alien platforms.
- jerome-jh 3y agoThis article https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/linux123.html is a pure joy to read
- poo-yie 3y agoThis is a stunning achievement from a technical point of view. Bravo! Is there any company that still owns the intellectual property of Lotus (and care about stuff like this)? I always liked Lotus 1-2-3. It was the first spreadsheet I ever used and it was quite useful. The biggest downside from the pre-graphical versions was charting/graphs and printing. However, for run-of-the-mill spreadsheet usage it was quite nice. I might have to give this a spin. edit: Did give it a spin and I now have it running on Debian. Impressive!
- LeoPanthera 3y agoLotus software still exists as a subsidiary of HCLTech, an Indian IT company. They acquired it from IBM. While it was still owned by IBM, 1-2-3 was officially discontinued in 2014. Legally, HCLTech probably still owns the rights to it, but since it hasn't been for sale for years, I would consider it abandonware and would not have many qualms about pirating it, especially as this is a port of "Release 3", from 1989.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoLotus Notes: so painful even IBM didn't want it anymore. PwC (big 4 financial auditing-side) used to be a mostly LN shop. I remember LN on OS/2 ran the backoffice of a US nationwide retail software chain.
- beachy 3y agoI worked for Lotus in the 90s as a systems engineer for a port of Lotus 123 for IBM mainframes. My territory was mainly scandanavian countries, due to a go getter salesman in that region, so I got to see that part of the world on expenses and do really interesting tech. What a time.
- throwawaycr4zy 3y agoCool! Was that for MVS or VM (or both)? I imagine there were a lot of challenges adapting it to work well in a 3270 environment.
- beachy 3y agoFrom memory MVS/XA - but it was so long ago I wouldn't bet on it. I do remember it was a great offering, though soon overshadowed by the new hotness that was Lotus Notes.
- kcplate 3y ago> though soon overshadowed by the new hotness that was Lotus Notes. The fun thing about that statement is I have no idea whether it was sarcastic or heartfelt. I have never found a more polarizing piece of software in my long career. It’s a love or hate there and doesn’t seem to be any “meh” opinion. (I was in the hate camp and thankfully my life has been Notes free for over 15 years)
- beachy 3y agoI feel Notes was a lot like 123. Immensely flexible and you could build anything in it. But the end results were a hairball that you'd never want dropped in your lap to maintain.
- kcplate 3y agoI hated notes but loved 123, I was even one of those weird slash key users of excel after we did the big MS switch for a whole lot longer than I should have been.
- tkngctrl 3y agoNo 1-2-3 for BSD?
- every 3y agoI thought 1-2-3 for Linux was sc [1]... [1] https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699
- anonymousiam 3y agosc is a SuperCalc clone. SuperCalc was a CP/M-based spreadsheet app that pre-dated Lotus 1-2-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCalc
- 1letterunixname 3y agoYep. I remember CA SuperCalc for DOS. It seemed to be more advanced.
- lproven 3y agoSuperCalc was even older, but it got developed further. Lotus twice dropped the ball with 1-2-3. It is the killer app that made the IBM PC a hit, meaning hand-coded assembler. The company rewrote v3 in C. Bigger, slower, needed more RAM. So, they used one of the 1st ever DOS extenders that allowed a DOS app to be bigger than 640 kB. Sadly they picked one incompatible with the hot new thing, Windows 3.0. 2nd screw up: they missed the GUI boat, because they guessed where to jump too early and got it wrong: they ported it to OS/2, which flopped, instead of to Windows 3... The double Lotus screwup allowed the competition chances. SuperCalc evolved into the first true 3D spreadsheet for the PC. CA bought the company and sold it for a bargain $50 or something, a tenth of the rivals' prices, so it became a very late DOS hit. Borland developed Quattro, a graphical spreadsheet app for DOS. That is where Excel's stretch-a-box-to-autofill feature came from: stolen from Quattro. It's still sold as part of WordPerfect Office today.
- themodelplumber 3y agoIt's an amazing story really, this project. And, what was it about the word "lotus" back then; surely the name-as-meme bore some tremendous global significance and possibly world-horoscope-level weight. It was kind of a powerful word. And I mean James Bond was even in on it. I do look at the graphics with a bit of longing curiousity though...I wonder if I could get Lotus SmartSuite for Windows 95 running again, just to try it for nostalgia. SmartSuite was bundled with one of my first PCs (toward the end of the days when the word lotus was still kinda cool), and I still remember looking at the blank agenda (and even the paper binder-planner skeuomorphism in Organizer) and full office launcher, and just taking in the raw organizing power of those tools...a real "where do you want to go today (TM)" feeling! ("I'll play Jane's USNF for a couple hours and then eat cereal for dinner" never felt quite right to fill in on the agenda, but that turned out to be where I wanted to go today, on so many days back then)
- okeuro49 3y ago> And I mean James Bond was even in on it. What's the reference?
- Lio 3y agoI'm guessing it's a reference to the amphibious Lotus Esprit car used in the film The Spy Who Loved Me[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Esprit#In_film_and_on_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Esprit#In_film_and_on_te...
- lproven 3y ago> I wonder if I could get Lotus SmartSuite for Windows 95 running again, just to try it for nostalgia. I've tried it on Win11. The whole suite worked perfectly but with 1 big caveat: Win11 no longer understands the old Help file format. So, no online help. Big snag. SmartSuite 9.8 was the last edition: https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-smartsuite/9-8 https://winworldpc.com/product/lotus-smartsuite/9-8 With the fixpak to take it to 9.8.6.1, that is the final ever release.
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- macdice 3y agoFun read. I'm pretty sure there were ways to run SCO SysV binaries unmodified on Linux (and I think FreeBSD and others), back in the day. Maybe something to do with ibcs2?
- anonymousiam 3y agoBack in the day, I ran native SCO binaries on Linux, but you needed the SCO shared libraries for most apps, and those were definitely not open source.
- somat 3y agoThe bsd binary compatibility system was an interesting effort to allow executeable files built for other systems to run on bsd, I never actually used it but my understanding is it was always hard to set up and fragile. OpenBSD removed it as they did not feel they could properly maintain the system. FreeBSD keeps a little of it around, mainly to run linux binaries. NetBSD it looks like they kept the whole buffet. https://www.netbsd.org/docs/compat.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/compat.html
- lproven 3y agoBSD = Berkeley Software/System Distro. iBCS = Intel Binary Compatibility Standard. iBCS2 = iBCS v2. Not the same thing or even related.
- macdice 3y ago... but the BSDs did have support for SystemV binaries, through modules compat_svr4 and compat_ibcs2, so the grand parent comment made perfect sense to me. Not sure why there were two and I don't plan to go down that rabbit hole today, but perhaps due to SVR4 vs SVR3 differences, and ELF vs COFF, shrug.
- lproven 3y agoFair point! I am not so familiar with them, but I am sure you're right.
- anonymousiam 3y agoLotus Notes (the email system) is still in active use by some organizations. IBM sold it to HCLTech in 2019: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/notes/8.5.3?topic=help-welcome-lotus-notes https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/notes/8.5.3?topic=help-welcome-l... https://www.hcltech.com/blogs/our-point-view-ibm-websphere-commerce-and-digital-experience https://www.hcltech.com/blogs/our-point-view-ibm-websphere-c... Perhaps somebody at one of those two organizations would still have the LPL, compiler and SDK?
- bitwize 3y agoIBM sold a lot of shit to HCL in 2019. My $WORK at the time was renegotiating the contracts with them to keep their Campaign and Interact (low/no-code marketing lead processing tools, clunky-ass flowchart UI) instances supported.
- actionfromafar 3y agoThey removed the last DOS related code from Lotus Notes in 2007. Since then, it's based on Eclipse.
- Neil44 3y agoI have a customer still on Notes. They have a whole big CRM and sales planning system built in it so they have a degree of lock in. It's kind of modern ish with an iOS app (HCL Verse) and 2FA. Works for them.
- cbreezyyall 3y agoTavis is an absolute gem and everything they do falls in the very small "good computer thing" bucket
- oblio 3y agoHim and Fabrice Bellard. Great engineers!
- 1letterunixname 3y agoOne of the Lotus founders / early employees, I was on a European bike tour and cruise with the guy about 2015. I'm trying to remember his name. He was legally blind but still rode a bike just fine, didn't crash, and had a great time.
- speed_spread 3y agoI'm surprised there isn't someone, somewhere with the OG source code for Lotus 1-2-3 or WordPerfect or TurboPascal. So much lost knowledge in those old apps.
- dang 3y agoRelated. Others? Original killer PC spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 now runs on Linux natively - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31583982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31583982 - June 2022 (1 comment) Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 - May 2022 (83 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 arbitrary resolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 - March 2021 (123 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 DOS Development Encyclopedia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26312681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26312681 - March 2021 (1 comment) Lotus 1-2-3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26304542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26304542 - March 2021 (1 comment) Rediscovering Lotus Agenda (MS-DOS, 1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24862343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24862343 - Oct 2020 (11 comments)
- snvzz 3y agoIt is fairly nice from a preservation perspective. And a shame that software this old hasn't been released as open source by its owners, thus this cannot be used in any meaningful way.
- sosodev 3y agoThe author of this port has written about how it was done. They have found enough debug data to do a full decompilation I think.
- snvzz 3y agoYes, I have read the link in the top of the readme in the repo about the methodology. It is fairly cool. Still, it is unrelated to Open Source, which isn't about having source code or the like, but about licensing. OSI's Open Source definition is more or less the same as GNU's four freedoms.
- phoe-krk 3y agoAccording to https://github.com/taviso/123elf/issues/105 https://github.com/taviso/123elf/issues/105 there is no real chance for getting a FOSS license here.
- snvzz 3y agoYes, I understand this is all done w/o the original code owners' permission. It is sad we have to walk on eggshells with code from the 80s. Copyright terms really are a mess.
- squarefoot 3y agoLurking around for text based spreadsheets for Linux, brought this one which can import/export xls and xlsx, use GNUPlot for graphing and Lua for scripting. https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im Already packaged in Debian and Alpine, possibly others.
- cool-RR 3y agoIf you don't know VisiData, you should give it a look. It's basically a modern version of Lotus 1-2-3 for the terminal. https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/
- justusthane 3y agoI’ve never used Lotus 1-2-3 so I can’t speak for the comparison, but VisiData is really awesome. I find it much easier than Excel for quick sorting and filtering, but its power goes far beyond that.
- layer8 3y agoThe user documentation in the wiki is great! https://github.com/taviso/123elf/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/taviso/123elf/wiki/Getting-Started
- baudaux 3y agoI will make it live online by integrating it into extendedmachine.com, my new operating system running in a web browser
- jamespo 3y agoRelated note, I was fascinated by Lotus Improv after seeing it in "Popular Computing World" magazine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv
- simonjgreen 3y agoMy first spreadsheet. And it was an eye opener. I think this was the first time I truly appreciated the power "behind he curtain" of computers.
- flyinghamster 3y agoI wonder if there was ever a Unix version of Lotus Agenda? It was a database/organizer from that era that my father still uses to this day for every last bit of his notekeeping (these days, in DOSbox on Win10). There was a project called "Chandler" that was intended to build a modern clone, but it seems to have gone nowhere. My dad's frustration with Windows 10 is starting to boil over, and while DOSbox runs just fine on Linux, a (semi-)native version would be better.
- cricalix 3y agoMention of Chandler triggered a memory of a book. "Dreaming in Code" by Scott Rosenberg. Dives into the history of the Chandler project. ISBN 978-1-4000-8247-6. I don't know if I agree with the blurb on the back that it's a successor to Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine", but I remember it being an interesting read. Sorry, doesn't help with your Agenda problem.
- lproven 3y agoAgenda is legal freeware now. https://www.old-games.com/download/5737/lotus-agenda-2-0 https://www.old-games.com/download/5737/lotus-agenda-2-0 Runs on DOSemu2: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/lotusagenda.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/lotusagenda.html
- jshaqaw 3y agoVery cool. Peak Lotus 123 will always be the cartridge form for the PCJr which was prob the only great thing about that blighted machine.
- nobleach 3y agoThat machine taught me Wordstar... but I agree, otherwise, it was a mess.
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- blakespot 3y agoWhat about VIP Professional??