Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on Debian Unstable problems and solution.

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on Debian Unstable problems and solution
(based on link from ibm site with Ubuntu 11.10 solution).

Get debian packages of Lotus Notes 8.5.3 and install them.
List of available packages for Debian :

ibm-lotus-activities-8.5.3.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-cae-8.5.3.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-feedreader-8.5.3.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-notes-8.5.3.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-sametime-8.5.3.i586.deb
ibm-lotus-symphony-8.5.3.i586.deb

Install what you need with 'dpkg -i'. Here are dependencies for Lotus Notes packages so you can install whatever is needed.

$ apt-cache show ibm-lotus-notes
Package: ibm-lotus-notes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: IBM
Installed-Size: 681204
Maintainer: IBM Lotus Product <sw_support@us.ibm.com>
Architecture: i386
Version: 8.5.3-20110916.0921
Replaces: ibm-lotus-notes-fixpack
Depends: gdb, coreutils, unzip, bash, procps, grep, sed, libart-2.0-2, libasound2, libatk1.0-0, libbonobo2-0, libbonoboui2-0, libc6, libcupsys2, libfontconfig1, libfreetype6, libgcc1, libgconf2-4, libgtk2.0-0, libglib2.0-0, libgnome2-0, libgnomecanvas2-0, libgnome-desktop-2 | libgnome-desktop-2-7 | libgnome-desktop-2-11 | libgnome-desktop-2-17, libgnomeui-0, libgnomevfs2-0, libglib2.0-0, libice6, libjpeg62, liborbit2, libpam0g, libpango1.0-0, libpng12-0, libpopt0, libsm6, libstdc++6, libx11-6, libxcursor1, libxext6, libxft2, libxi6, libxkbfile1, libxml2, libxp6, libxrender1, libxss1, libxt6, libxtst6, libz1
Pre-Depends: libgnomeprint2.2-0, libgnomeprintui2.2-0
Recommends: ttf-xfree86-nonfree
Conflicts: ibm-lotus-notes-hotfix, ibm-lotus-notes-fixpack (<< 8.5.3)

You need extra fonts which are in non-free repository of Debian Unstable so you need to enable this if you want your Notes client to look like win32 one.

$ apt-get install ttf-xfree86-nonfree t1-xfree86-nonfree

We also need to get some additional libs which are specific to this release and to place them in /opt/ibm/lotus/notes directory.

 # wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
 # wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0
 # wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so.0
 # wget http://www.benkevan.com/upload/lotus_notes/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
 # mv *.so.0  /opt/ibm/lotus/notes

Start your Notes now and everything should be ok. If you have Notes installation on Windows you can transfer file desktop8.ndk (found somewhere in local user Notes directory) and place it in ~/lotus/notes/data/. When you start your Notes select Open -> Application -> Workspace.

Lotus Sametime chat client also works fine for me.