Continuing the recent theme of Linux related posts here is a work around to installing and configuring Lotus Notes 8.0.2 on a CentOS Linux workstation with Firefox 3 installed.

As it stands today, Notes does not like the XULRunner 1.9 framework that automatically gets installed when you run "yum update" via a Firefox 3 dependency. Notes will install but will always crash with that lovely JVM error screen (really, someone though that was a good idea?).

Anyway to get around this do the following:
1.        Log in as root
2.        Do a "yum remove xulrunner". This will also uninstall firefox.
3.        Do a "yum install compat-libstdc++-33" to install any needed compat libs
4.        Install Lotus Notes
5.        Log out as root
6.        Log in as a "normal user"
7.        Configure Notes
8.        Try to launch Notes once configured, it should start up OK now
9.        Close Notes
10.        Open a console and log in switch user to root ("su -")
11.        Do a "yum install firefox"
12.        Try Notes once Firefox is installed, you should now be in CentOS/Notes/Firefox nirvana.