Slashdot Mirror

As soon as they announced the newest release (2018) was subscription based, I went looking for alternatives (OSS and perpetual license).

GnuCash. Terrible name. Decent program.

I concur that the benefits of "upgrades" have been a matter of diminishing returns for quite some time now. Even if there's upgrades and features now, I worry that in five years from now, the real value will be "not losing access to your data".I share your staunch aversion to software subscriptions for that reason.

The problem with relying on the Open Source community to fill the vacuum is that there are lots and lots of factors that are involved. People genuinely do appreciate and benefit from ubiquitous access to their data. That's certainly possible with a whole lot of self-hosted software, but those methods require back end resources, a firewall of consequence, backups, and an internet connection that not only has enough upload bandwidth to support these applications, but an internet connection that doesn't block ports 80 and 443. Here at Slashdot those things aren't a problem, and the Synology NAS units (as well as a few others) help to streamline these through things like QuickConnect, but now we've left OSS solutions.

If we're looking at desktop applications, Quickbooks' greatest asset is the fact that every accounting firm will take a .QBW file, and any Main Street business owner can talk to any other Main Street business owner and probably find out how to do what they need to do. Meanwhile, virtually every OSS accounting package I've looked at has either had a Spartan UI, doesn't do payroll, is gross overkill, or is cloud-only...and all of them are double-entry. The closest I've found from a UI perspective is Xtuple, but its server requirements are insane compared to Quickbooks for a single-machine install. Thus, I submit that the reason why Intuit (whose level of evil in the software world is only eclipsed by Oracle) owns the small business accounting market is because there aren't any single entry OSS financial management applications at all...and with the exception of GNUcash, the only reason why there are the higher end OSS products is because all of their commercial packages have massive price tags attached to them that will rival Intuit's enterprise editions.

On the creative software front, OSS is still very difficult to acclimate to. GIMP can generally do the job in spite of its suboptimal interface, Inkscape is limited but can do the basics well enough, and Scribus is in the uncanny valley between Publisher and InDesign. KDenLive isn't the worst thing ever, but video editing = patent encumbered formats = OSS license hell. Ardour and Audacity can do the job, but they definitely lack the polish of Audition. Honestly, the best competitor to Adobe is Corel, not Github.

There are lots of places where OSS shines (pick just about anywhere in the server closet - you're crazy to run Windows Server as a router, but pfSense, Untangle, Smoothwall, Endian, ClearOS......). There are, however, going to be areas where OSS just will always play second fiddle to commercial software houses. As my very loose rule of thumb, I've found that the further away from programming a discipline is, the worse the OSS software packages are for it.

There are several accounting solutions out there, just a quick search found:
http://www.gnucash.org/
http://turbocash.net/
http://frontaccounting.com/wb3...
http://www.sql-ledger.com/
http://ledgersmb.org/

Her is a list of replacements for AutoCAD:
http://blog.cometdocs.com/10-g...

Besides GIMP there is Krita and Cinepaint, and GIMPshop provides a Photoshop like interface. GIMP does have plugins if one needs CMYK. Inkscape does Vector Graphics. Scribus is more of a replacement for Illustrator.

There were some lack of features years ago. The options have matured since then.

and dont forget to throw blender in there for 3d modeling.

There are several accounting solutions out there, just a quick search found:
http://www.gnucash.org/
http://turbocash.net/
http://frontaccounting.com/wb3...
http://www.sql-ledger.com/
http://ledgersmb.org/

Her is a list of replacements for AutoCAD:
http://blog.cometdocs.com/10-g...

Besides GIMP there is Krita and Cinepaint, and GIMPshop provides a Photoshop like interface. GIMP does have plugins if one needs CMYK. Inkscape does Vector Graphics. Scribus is more of a replacement for Illustrator.

There were some lack of features years ago. The options have matured since then.

You could give GnuCash a try.

OpenERP for the POS option: http://www.openerp.com/products/pos OpenERP has built in inventory and all the financial accounting plus management drill-down 'dashboard' (so you as the owner can monitor the business "what are sales today?" "Ok" "what are sales of chicken platters today?" "hey, that's nice"). An average technical person can install this on an older pc you might already have and be up and running pretty quick.

gnu cash as noted - real accounting package. Think 'peachtree' not 'quickbooks'. http://gnucash.org/

LibreOffice.org (instead of openoffice)

Others that might help: http://www.openbravo.com/retail has a POS
http://www.myfreepos.net/featured.htm
also google 'windows linux equivalents' to get other software you might want from time to time, like Brainstorming/mindmapping (xmind is good), ganttproject for project management tasks.

A quick search reveals payroll can be handled with a 4 step process. Seems pretty simple to me. If it's actually a problem for you it really shouldn't require much additional code to implement something.

GnuCash, perhaps?

a quick google - shows

http://www.gnucash.org/

and it seems to be quite active

All you have to do is what you should already be doing, looking over your statement and reporting anything you have questions about.

Looking over? Doesn't anyone else use electronic bookkeeping and reconcile their bank statements? Money is so hard to come by. It is really worth your while to keep accurate records. And if you're nerdy enough to read this website...

I spend a few minutes each day typing receipts and cash transactions into the computer. Just this very act has increased my savings. My theory is that it helps bring your transactions into consciousness. You can also get all sorts of cool charts and graphs, which helps me decide if I'm really getting good value for my money.

This free and open source accounting application has served me well for years.

I am all for theoretical knowledge, but I really do believe basic bookkeeping should be a standard high school class... I didn't start keeping books for myself until I was into my 20's, and it has been a highly empowering activity.

see: http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings

It shouldn't be too difficult to set up a cron job which imports your data via aqbanking. You should be able to get by without Gnucash, but aqbanking will be your friend here.

I would think a majority can use a spreadsheet and know about http://www.gnucash.org/ and I guess if they didn't they know now.

Those kids who are in debt now are going to be in debt for a long long.. js.

I quit using Quicken years ago because of that very reason. I think it's called a Sunset Policy or something. They want you to upgrade every 3 years so they disable certain features.

I found a free, open source program that I have been using for almost 2 years now. It's called GnuCash. They have a nice tutorial to learn how to set things up.

http://www.gnucash.org/

I don't know if gnucash will do the auto-download from the bank, because I stopped doing that in Quicken a long time ago. I enter everything manually from receipts then verify my online data. I do this because I got in the habit of downloading the data and never really looking at it to see if something was messed up.

You may have luck with gnucash, but honestly, if you're looking to import a Money file, you may be SOL. Microsoft is well known for its cryptic file formats and total lack of interoperability.

If Money can export your file into something like QIF or OFX, you'll have more options.

IMO no list of Windows FOSS would be complete without GnuCash, the accouting software. I first used it on Linux a few years ago to track spending when I started living on my own. Now, as a contract programmer, I use it on Windows to maintain my corporation's books. Not only is it a mature, feature-rich piece of software, but the dev team gives due attention to the Windows-specific issues, rather than treating the Windows port as a hands off "you're on your own" thing like some other projects from the Linux world.

That is why you make your money selling the "full package" treatment.I take those couple of hundred bucks worth of parts and sell it for $500 and have customers sending their family and friends to get boxes built from me. Why? Because when you get an XP PC from me you get a "just flip the switch and go" solution.

First I find out what they are going to use it for and tailor the hardware to their requirements. Then when they power it on the find it has antivirus and spybot already installed and set to do their nightly scans and updates when they aren't using it, they have Oxygen Office and Gnucash already to go for any office work they need to do, they have Firefox with ABP already installed for ad free web browsing, they have Klite Mega Codec pack so any video format they run into "just works" out of the box, I give them Songbird for their music needs, and if they bring the discs for anything proprietary they own(cameras, printers, etc) i install that too. That way when they get home all they do is "plug in and go" and they are quite happy to pay for that convenience.

So it is all about providing that extra bit of effort, adding that extra value. Of course they don't need to know that thanks to Almeza Multiset, or as I like to call it the PC guy's little helper, it is all pretty much "stick in the disc, hit go and go have a smoke" but what matters to them is that they don't have to fool with it. No hours installing stuff, or dealing with crapware, they just flip the switch and enjoy. So if you feel bad about charging for the time pick up a copy of Almeza, make you a few unattended CDs with it, and then offer Packages with your repairs. You'd be surprised how many folks are happy to pay to have the PC just "do what they want" out of the box with no fuss. And it will give your customers a reason to rave about you to their friends/family/coworkers. And more business in this economy is always a good thing ;-)

I like Linux, and I don't need/want Quickbooks, but what similar software is better than Quickbooks and available for Linux?

I personally use GnuCash which is enough for my needs. I looked online to see if there was something more small business oriented, and came across LedgerSMB.

I don't really use QuickBooks, so I can't vouch for whether or not those programs contain every feature you might need. However, even if there are features lacking in the open source versions, it's my beliefs that not having QuickBooks available at all in Linux is just going to further motivate developers to work on those features in the available open source programs (both because they need the features, and because they will receive more pressure from end-users, who have no alternative programs).

Maybe some people would use Linux if Quickbooks were available on it.

Well, part of my point was that I don't really care if more people use Linux. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be an elitist prick saying that "I don't want windows Lusers" in the Linux world, or something equally stupid. I welcome everyone to try it, and I love Ubuntu for making this easier for the average person. I also think everyone should use the best tool for the job. If QuickBooks is what you need, and you can't find an alternative, then use Windows. I keep a Windows partition around myself, mostly for a game here and there. Macs are also pretty good in that they have the unix goodness and lots of well designed software.

The problem is that the whole point of using Linux is an essential belief in the open source philosophy. Once everyone starts releasing proprietary software for Linux, I envision the bigger companies dominating the market, one popular closed source package being dependent on another, until eventually Linux will be like the Mac environment. Sure, Darwin is open source, but just about everything running on top of it is proprietary. I'd hate to see the day when the kernel is the only thing free in my distribution.

Good news for you: a number of popular Windows games (such as Civ 4) run well in Wine. (hint: look up "winetricks" and use that) Some versions of MS money are reported to work, though I have not tried them. You might instead want to try installing GNUCash for Windows and see how easy it is to migrate your data.

As to your dual-boot issues: I have not had the same problem as you, but I do sympathize. I think dual-boot support has come a long way in the past few years. If you back up your Windows registry before you install Linux, you should at least not have to re-install all your apps if things go wrong.

TFA is talking about the OFX interface to their bank not working. OFX in GnuCash is handled by the aqbanking library, which switched to using gnutls rather than OpenSSL a while ago. I didn't find any specific mention of EV certificates on the GNU TLS web page, but since it does support X.509 certificates I wouldn't expect there to be a problem.

I suspect the post you labeled a troll is in fact just someone who has an earlier version of GnuCash and/or aqbanking that's not setup correctly, because it's only very recently that all that worked like it's supposed to out of the box. For example, you need Ubuntu Intrepid for OFXDirectConnect to work--it takes a backport to even make the Hardy GnuCash work correctly here. This code is pretty new, and as you can see on that wiki page it can be difficult to setup, so I wouldn't be surprised to find it still doesn't work for some people.

Intuit is dead to me. I use Moneydance. It's cross-platform (try the demo) and works great. Imports wonderfully from Quicken. Aside from that, there are many many many many options for mac. And quite a number of good ones for Linux too. There's even GPL'd GnuCash for more sophisticated accounting.

And because I don't like Intuit, here's an offtopic tip-- did you know that thanks to a certain pre-Bush president, any company who wants to sell tax efiling software also has to provide free tax filing to the general public? Because if you think about it, why the hell are IRS tax filing servers (paid for by the public) not made available to the public? Rather, only certain corporations who then SELL their services to the public to use them? Seems a little unfairly tilted towards big business, doesn't it? Wouldn't you think the government would provide software to the public directly?

Well the Clinton administration thought so too, but negotiated with Intuit and others to let them keep their oily grip on the tax filing software in exchange for this "free filing software" deal. Never heard of it? Well, they certainly don't advertise it widely. And I've noticed that in years past they've lowered the maximum income to qualify. Currently it's an adjusted gross income of $54,000.

According to the web site, more info for this year becomes available January 16th.

Pass it on. The more you know...

I'm not going to fork over $50 just so some company can sell me a few hundred megabytes to balance my checkbook. That's what GNU Cash is for!!

I'm glad that the argument that "they do it for the glory" worked for your dad. But I think in general it is a weak argument that doesn't really explain much and may be mostly fictitious. For instance, the Spread Firefox contingent make a seriously important contribution to the larger Firefox community, but none of them are in it for the glory, or are using programmer's skills for that matter.

[I know I'm preaching to the choir here. Please think about how you might be able to use the following in your efforts to convince those around you that FOSS is an important phenomenon that is significantly reshaping our world. Consider this a part of my contribution back to the open source communities that are giving me so much: Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Blender, Apache, GnuCash, and the list goes on and on...]

Here's a core truth about successful FOSS projects: it really is all about the community.

These projects come together like an Amish community that decides it needs a new meeting house, or an Inuit community that decides it needs a new whaling canoe.

Community members gather to mutually develop a plan, then each contributes a bit of their labor in their free time for the common good. In the Amish community, those with carpentry skills measure the boards and do the hammering; those with lesser skills work the saws and fetch and carry the boards. Others with different skills prepare the meals. Everyone contributes to the building and in a Saturday's time, hundreds of man hours, including that of skilled craftsmen, cause a new meeting house to be raised.

Everyone involved benefits: any member of the community can use the building. No one person owns the result, but everyone involved is wealthier for having access to the new asset. And it all comes together with incredible speed, and (by capitalistic standards) an impossibly low cost of production.

This is a very ancient way of getting big projects done. The internet makes it easy to go back to these ancient ways for software production. The internet makes it possible for worldwide communities to form around different ideas that would benefit everybody (an office suite with fully shareable data files-- OpenOffice.org; a superior 3D modeling and animation package-- Blender; an accounting package that even a mon'n'pop grocery store could afford to use-- GnuCash). Given sufficient interest, a production team of thousands can self-assemble and create in a very short time a piece of complex software that matches or exceeds the quality that any closed shop could afford to produce.

Since there is no cost involved in sharing the results of these community efforts even with people who are outside of the community, it makes sense to just make them completely open for anyone to use. For one thing, it is easier to do that than to come up with any kind of exclusionary scheme. Any more, these products are generally copyrighted by some representative of the community, but the licensing is used to protect the community's long term interests in its jointly owned property, and not as means to play zero sum profit games. The wealth that the community builders wanted is there, and is undiminished by sharing it with everyone. To not so share it would actually be harder to do and would add an impossible cost.

A Christian might see this as a loaves and fishes thing. What would have happened at that assembly if some guy in the middle of the crowd decided that he was not going to hand the basket on unless the fellow next to him paid him a coin or two. Well, the other baskets being passed about would route around him, wouldn't they? And that is what the FOSS concept is turning the world of software into: a gigantic loaves and fishes meeting where nobody is going to go hungry.

[Thank you for reading this rant.]

These people disagree with you:

AAXNet

Slashdot

About.com

But then you've proved yourself to be a shill for Quickbooks. Why should anyone listen to you?

I guess you never read Slashdot?

Cost advantage, at some time you will need the Quickbooks Pro $199 version and that Amazon.com coupon expired.

Ease of use, both Quickbooks and GNUCash have a user friendly GUI. Have you actually ever used GNUCash?

Payroll, RTFM about Payroll obviously you never read the manual, n00b!

Taxes, GNUCash uses the EU term VAT and the FAQ covers accounting questions including tax questions and GNUCash supports taxes.

Wide acceptance, hard to track who uses GNUCash because it cannot be tracked by sales receipts. But I know of many small businesses in my area that use it.

addons are covered in the FAQs Customizing and The Plugins development page.

Major company, hah Slashdot you are using it is built with open source software and it isn't a major company. FOSS software doesn't need major companies, the community supports it. But companies like IBM support FOSS software like Linux and GNUCash and OpenOffice.Org is that major enough for you?

Support, yes tons of it if you know how to read manuals and FAQS, which obviously you don't.

Training availability and costs, most GNUCash training is free over the Internet in Wiki sites and PDF files. Books are written on it as well.

Accountants recommendation, accountants recommended and gave support to X-Accountant which GNUCash is based on and existed before Quickbooks.

3rd Party integration, if you read the FAQs and Manual, you'll know it integrates with OfficeOffice.org very well as Excel and other software, as well as has an API that programmers can follow to write plugins.

Next time do your own homework before you dis a FOSS software.

I guess you never read Slashdot?

Cost advantage, at some time you will need the Quickbooks Pro $199 version and that Amazon.com coupon expired.

Ease of use, both Quickbooks and GNUCash have a user friendly GUI. Have you actually ever used GNUCash?

Payroll, RTFM about Payroll obviously you never read the manual, n00b!

Taxes, GNUCash uses the EU term VAT and the FAQ covers accounting questions including tax questions and GNUCash supports taxes.

Wide acceptance, hard to track who uses GNUCash because it cannot be tracked by sales receipts. But I know of many small businesses in my area that use it.

addons are covered in the FAQs Customizing and The Plugins development page.

Major company, hah Slashdot you are using it is built with open source software and it isn't a major company. FOSS software doesn't need major companies, the community supports it. But companies like IBM support FOSS software like Linux and GNUCash and OpenOffice.Org is that major enough for you?

Support, yes tons of it if you know how to read manuals and FAQS, which obviously you don't.

Training availability and costs, most GNUCash training is free over the Internet in Wiki sites and PDF files. Books are written on it as well.

Accountants recommendation, accountants recommended and gave support to X-Accountant which GNUCash is based on and existed before Quickbooks.

3rd Party integration, if you read the FAQs and Manual, you'll know it integrates with OfficeOffice.org very well as Excel and other software, as well as has an API that programmers can follow to write plugins.

Next time do your own homework before you dis a FOSS software.

I guess you never read Slashdot?

Cost advantage, at some time you will need the Quickbooks Pro $199 version and that Amazon.com coupon expired.

Ease of use, both Quickbooks and GNUCash have a user friendly GUI. Have you actually ever used GNUCash?

Payroll, RTFM about Payroll obviously you never read the manual, n00b!

Taxes, GNUCash uses the EU term VAT and the FAQ covers accounting questions including tax questions and GNUCash supports taxes.

Wide acceptance, hard to track who uses GNUCash because it cannot be tracked by sales receipts. But I know of many small businesses in my area that use it.

addons are covered in the FAQs Customizing and The Plugins development page.

Major company, hah Slashdot you are using it is built with open source software and it isn't a major company. FOSS software doesn't need major companies, the community supports it. But companies like IBM support FOSS software like Linux and GNUCash and OpenOffice.Org is that major enough for you?

Support, yes tons of it if you know how to read manuals and FAQS, which obviously you don't.

Training availability and costs, most GNUCash training is free over the Internet in Wiki sites and PDF files. Books are written on it as well.

Accountants recommendation, accountants recommended and gave support to X-Accountant which GNUCash is based on and existed before Quickbooks.

3rd Party integration, if you read the FAQs and Manual, you'll know it integrates with OfficeOffice.org very well as Excel and other software, as well as has an API that programmers can follow to write plugins.

Next time do your own homework before you dis a FOSS software.

I guess you never read Slashdot?

Cost advantage, at some time you will need the Quickbooks Pro $199 version and that Amazon.com coupon expired.

Ease of use, both Quickbooks and GNUCash have a user friendly GUI. Have you actually ever used GNUCash?

Payroll, RTFM about Payroll obviously you never read the manual, n00b!

Taxes, GNUCash uses the EU term VAT and the FAQ covers accounting questions including tax questions and GNUCash supports taxes.

Wide acceptance, hard to track who uses GNUCash because it cannot be tracked by sales receipts. But I know of many small businesses in my area that use it.

addons are covered in the FAQs Customizing and The Plugins development page.

Major company, hah Slashdot you are using it is built with open source software and it isn't a major company. FOSS software doesn't need major companies, the community supports it. But companies like IBM support FOSS software like Linux and GNUCash and OpenOffice.Org is that major enough for you?

Support, yes tons of it if you know how to read manuals and FAQS, which obviously you don't.

Training availability and costs, most GNUCash training is free over the Internet in Wiki sites and PDF files. Books are written on it as well.

Accountants recommendation, accountants recommended and gave support to X-Accountant which GNUCash is based on and existed before Quickbooks.

3rd Party integration, if you read the FAQs and Manual, you'll know it integrates with OfficeOffice.org very well as Excel and other software, as well as has an API that programmers can follow to write plugins.

Next time do your own homework before you dis a FOSS software.

I guess you never read Slashdot?

Cost advantage, at some time you will need the Quickbooks Pro $199 version and that Amazon.com coupon expired.

Ease of use, both Quickbooks and GNUCash have a user friendly GUI. Have you actually ever used GNUCash?

Payroll, RTFM about Payroll obviously you never read the manual, n00b!

Taxes, GNUCash uses the EU term VAT and the FAQ covers accounting questions including tax questions and GNUCash supports taxes.

Wide acceptance, hard to track who uses GNUCash because it cannot be tracked by sales receipts. But I know of many small businesses in my area that use it.

addons are covered in the FAQs Customizing and The Plugins development page.

Major company, hah Slashdot you are using it is built with open source software and it isn't a major company. FOSS software doesn't need major companies, the community supports it. But companies like IBM support FOSS software like Linux and GNUCash and OpenOffice.Org is that major enough for you?

Support, yes tons of it if you know how to read manuals and FAQS, which obviously you don't.

Training availability and costs, most GNUCash training is free over the Internet in Wiki sites and PDF files. Books are written on it as well.

Accountants recommendation, accountants recommended and gave support to X-Accountant which GNUCash is based on and existed before Quickbooks.

3rd Party integration, if you read the FAQs and Manual, you'll know it integrates with OfficeOffice.org very well as Excel and other software, as well as has an API that programmers can follow to write plugins.

Next time do your own homework before you dis a FOSS software.

RTF FAQs! If the bank uses CSV, QIF, or OFX formated file uploads, it does support online banking. You really need to RTFM before you bash FOSS.

Ever heard of it? GNUCash anyone, anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?

But you might try GnuCash

I'm not your strawman, so put down the torch. I don't think this is the year of the Linux desktop, and have been quite explicit in saying that I think that OSS is very good at some things, while closed source models seem to do better at others.

Which was totally irrelevant to my comments meant for the OP.

I think that many Linux desktop applications are at or approaching the point of competitiveness with their closed-source brethren, but I also think that its going to be a long time before some parts of the industry come under contention.

Do you run Linux on your desktop? I've found this to be patently false.

My initial question was simply whether OSS will wind up dominating arenas with disjoint user and developer bases the way that it does where those two groups are closely aligned, and you ask when we'll know the answer to that. My general feeling is that we already know that it is possible for projects like Firefox to contest some segments of the market, but that we probably won't see just one model in very many parts of the industry unless an application that simply obliterates its competition winds up emerging, and I don't think its possible to predict whether such a rogue entity would be open or closed.
You ask what my standards for making that judgment would be, and if you're driving at the point that its a subjective estimation, you're right.

Part of my point is that the FF team has a big player backing them with money. Should that company no longer fund the primary developers, would FF survive? I don't really think so. GNUCash is a more appropriate model; the developers think I want all the gory details of double entry accounting, which I don't. Things like MS Money or Quicken hide those details for me. GNUCash also was lacking in any reporting of any kind. They even admit it: "I'd guess that GnuCash's biggest problem is that programmers don't use the software." These are the majority of OSS projects.

You ask what my standards for making that judgment would be, and if you're driving at the point that its a subjective estimation, you're right. Market position is very difficult to correctly ascertain, and I don't particularly think its the kind of thing either of us really wants to spend our lives doing. As a result, I hope you'll forgive me when I borrow the words of Anthony Comstock and give you the deeply unsatisfying answer that "I'll know it when I see it".

Well, the problem is that without objective qualifications we can't really ever evaluate if your statement is true.

As far as it not having been settled, well, we're sitting here arguing about it.

Well, I imagine we could forever too, since we don't have anything objective to go on.

Sure, I'm writing this from a Linux machine running Firefox, but from your earlier statements I envision you doing the same from a Windows box and IE. With any luck, competition will help to improve the quality of all the contenders.

Windows and FF actually, although I am using IE about the same as FF now that IE7 is out.

If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about your experience with open source. What projects did you think were most or least competitive?

It was harder to use. GNUcash wasn't cutting it (no reports), I still had random crashes. The documentation is non-existent in most cases, and managing my network is easier with Windows Server 2003 (SBS). And of course RPM hell. I felt like I was spending more time fighting to get Linux to do what I want than actually having it do what I wanted. And I put the time in too; I had run a linux server for 10 years and on the desktop for three. It was honestly more frustrating than Windows.

For personal/small-business accounting, there's GnuCash, although I don't know how easy it would be for a Quicken users to adopt.

Taxes (in the US, at least) are a little tricky because you have to file paperwork with the IRS for permission to submit tax returns electronically; an end-user can't just upload their return directly to the IRS. So an open-source tax package all by itself couldn't substitute for TurboTax.

I second this. And knowledge of a software package can help you a lot. I learnt to use simple bookkeeping software when I was 13-14 years old, and more complex software 5-6 years later. This has helped me much. A nice package you can try is GnuCash.

Yesterday a colleague asked me about open source personal accounting software (small business accounting software, actually). I pointed her to GnuCash. I have little need of it myself (refer to my sig), but it had been a few years since I had looked at it, and I was interested to see the following:

"GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows." (It didn't run on Windows last I looked.)

"QIF/OFX/HBCI Import, Transaction Matching" It might be worth a look.

Yah, but a lot of applications, like Anki, or Gnucash, just do this with local html widgets. You don't need remote html to do that.

I hear ya! My distro of choice is Novell openSUSE 10.2, which is very easy to set up and use, though I had to remove zmd to get efficient updates with opensuse-updater (the upcoming 10.3 doesn't install zmd by default). IMHO, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is an order of magnitude easier to set up and use than Ubuntu, though the /. community in general has taken an anti-Novell stance due to its patent cross licensing agreement with Microsoft (which is funny, considering how /. loves Apple despite Apple's numerous patent and technology cross licensing agreements with Microsoft, but I digress).

I've been able to "convert" two people at work from Windows XP to openSUSE 10.2 based on its merits and ease of use. Ubuntu will hopefully get to a similar position from a technical perspective, but IMHO at this time, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is already there, and Novell has committed themselves to making SUSE Linux a world-class desktop operating system.

From your post, here is what openSUSE 10.2 and likely other distros can offer:

- Browser: Firefox, Konqueror, Mozilla Seamonkey, Opera, and IEs4Linux (I use IEs4Linux to access Outlook Web Access's calendar at work, since I use Thunderbird for my email. I'm looking forward to an Exchange plug-in for Mozilla Lighning)

- Email: Thunderbird (yay! I'm also writing a Salesforce.com extension for it called Thunderforce), Evolution (I actually despise it, though I also don't like Outlook's interface. To each, their own.. Don't bother with the Exchange connector; it's slow and crashes often), KMail, and others

- Quicken 2008 might be tricky. Quicken 2007 appears to work to an extent, but it might have issues, which is probably not good for an accounting package

- GnuCash is a possible replacement for Quicken, though it's more like QuickBooks than Quicken. For a personal finance look and feel, KMyMoney might be the better way to go, though some time might need to be invested in the conversion process. Converting from Quicken Mac 2004 to KMyMoney was not seamless for me, but I haven't gone back and fixed the errors in the import configuration that I used and tried again. If you do the GnuCash approach, then you can use my GnuCashToQIF program to export back to Quicken in case if you want to go back to it or if you need to export your data to an accountant, either as QIF or IIF. I have an old Mac at home that I'm moving away from, though I'm still using Quicken and iTunes on it

- Novell's version of OpenOffice includes extensive support for Excel macros, so it's worth trying out. It might address all of your Excel needs. As a nice bonus, OpenOffice uses a single-document interface (SDI) instead of a multiple-document interface (MDI), permitting you to have two or more separate top-level spreadsheet windows side-by-side or on different monitors. Excel is MDI, though it does create a top-level start menu button for each open document, essentially faking SDI, but it's really MDI. You could enlarge Excel to span multiple monitors and have your MDI windows not maximized, but that breaks down if you have one monitor portrait and the other one landscape. If you really, really need Excel, then it appears to be well supported by CrossOver Office

- Visual Studio 2005 is a tough one because MonoDevelop might not include all the features that you may be accustomed to. It does implement a lot, but it's probably not a drop-in replacement yet.

Not that it matters, but since you asked...

Photoshop -> GIMP
Avid -> LIVES - Note: I am not a video editor and have no idea if this program is any good.
Quicken -> GNUCash, among others.

I guess what I'm saying is that, based on your definition of "silly", there's quite a bit of silliness going on in the world today. *grin*

Speaking of Wine, I don't use it a lot. I have some Windows foreign-language-study programs that run just fine under it. Some Windows games run all right under it; the occasional crash is part of the fun :). The one application I'd like to see working better is Personal Ancestral File, but the Linux alternatives are competitive. I use OpenOffice or Koffice or emacs for office stuff, and write new software in perl or Java or C#, all of which are cross-platform.

The thing is, with Ubuntu Joe Sixpack doesn't need to buy Quicken, a DVD creator, a DVD player or Greetings Workshop, because their equivalents all available for free through the Ubuntu repositories! Commercial software doesn't have to exist for every need, just for the ones where there isn't an open source equivalent.

So (in bizzaro world, where Walmart employees know anything about Linux) the salesperson would explain to Joe that if he gets the $60 more expensive Ubuntu system, he doesn't need to spend $100 on all those other programs. Plus he gets a full office suite installed by default, so he doesn't have to spend multiple $100s on MS Office. Oh, and he doesn't need to buy those virus scanners and spyware removal tools, saving even more money. Then the saleperson will tell Joe that if he buys the Ubuntu system, he will get free upgrades for life, for all of the products it comes with. Sounds a bit more compelling when you put it that way, doesn't it?

The only thing you would have trouble with is games, which is a known problem for Linux as it used to be for Mac. Since Mac doesn't have DirectX, I would guess that they use OpenGL for 3D games, so it wouldn't take much of a Linux market to make it worthwhile for the games companies to port their Mac version to run on Linux too.

One of those is Quicken. I know there is GnuCash and others, but when I started using them I found them to be cumbersome, and for some reason it wasn't able to import any of my bank statements. Finally got fed up with it...

Completely understandable, expecially if this was any time ago. Even if you look at the current best documentation on OFX importing you'll see the whole thing is a still a gigantic user interface disaster, and that page only goes back to September 2006--before then figuring out what to do was near impossible. At this point, enough people have mapped out the bank server info that the setup is getting easier to cope with every month.

The latest betas of gnucash now run on Windows, which means that it's far easier for people to run it in parallel with Quicken to work out the remaining kinks. Once it's past both those barriers--low risk transition from Quicken on Windows and less work to get OFX working--Gnucash will for the first time ever be in a position where it might get some momentum going for real users, instead of just being suitable for hackers. The next six months should be very interesting for this project.

One of those is Quicken. I know there is GnuCash and others, but when I started using them I found them to be cumbersome, and for some reason it wasn't able to import any of my bank statements. Finally got fed up with it...

Completely understandable, expecially if this was any time ago. Even if you look at the current best documentation on OFX importing you'll see the whole thing is a still a gigantic user interface disaster, and that page only goes back to September 2006--before then figuring out what to do was near impossible. At this point, enough people have mapped out the bank server info that the setup is getting easier to cope with every month.

The latest betas of gnucash now run on Windows, which means that it's far easier for people to run it in parallel with Quicken to work out the remaining kinks. Once it's past both those barriers--low risk transition from Quicken on Windows and less work to get OFX working--Gnucash will for the first time ever be in a position where it might get some momentum going for real users, instead of just being suitable for hackers. The next six months should be very interesting for this project.

One of those is Quicken. I know there is GnuCash and others, but when I started using them I found them to be cumbersome, and for some reason it wasn't able to import any of my bank statements. Finally got fed up with it...

Completely understandable, expecially if this was any time ago. Even if you look at the current best documentation on OFX importing you'll see the whole thing is a still a gigantic user interface disaster, and that page only goes back to September 2006--before then figuring out what to do was near impossible. At this point, enough people have mapped out the bank server info that the setup is getting easier to cope with every month.

The latest betas of gnucash now run on Windows, which means that it's far easier for people to run it in parallel with Quicken to work out the remaining kinks. Once it's past both those barriers--low risk transition from Quicken on Windows and less work to get OFX working--Gnucash will for the first time ever be in a position where it might get some momentum going for real users, instead of just being suitable for hackers. The next six months should be very interesting for this project.

The problem from Dell's point of view is touched by the author.

If you go configure the cheapest possible PC you can at Dell's website, you can do it damn cheap y just about any measure.

But they try like heck to upsell you to something, anything, with a decent profit margin. Two of the biggest profit makers, in no special order are printers and cameras. At-home photography is a cash cow. HP isn't anything practically but an *ink* and paper company. Selling you a $500 PC with a $100 printer and $100 camera is a great sale to Dell because that $200 of add-on's is a whole different margin category than the PC. Plus it leads to years of sales opportunitis for ink, batteries, paper, etc.

So, when you say you had to research which printers worked well and which ones did not that should clue you into a big worry. Actually getting software that is the right mix of features/ease of use for a simple needs user is also a major concern. Selling a product which limits upsell potential for high-profit products is a really bad business decision.

I have no problem with Linux whatsoever, but hopefully Dell will think carefully about succumbing to the pressure from a highly selected, highly elite techno-saavy crowd who is probably not representative of the entire set of Dell customers. Selling Linux pre-loaded needs to be done carefully, with carefully crafted expectations. Nothing but nothing can damage the long term prospects of Linux than putting it unsuccessfully into the hands of the mass market. Literally nothing can undo the perception of a product as a cheap "knock off" of something else. It is the kiss of death for a generation or more to a good brand name.

Finally, though there isn't what I would call a great track record with MS, oddly enough, there is a certain stability to Windows in terms of release schedule. Even compared to other commerical OS'es, Windows moves at a glacial development pace. And when a new release happens it's a gigantic bang complete with lots of hype but also some carefully planning. Honestly, with Linux, it is entirely possible that a major or even minor release could have very large implications and Dell could be left holding the bag with it's customers. This could happen with MS, but Dell is a large enough customer that frankly pressure can be applied directly up the chain. A reasonable ancedote goes back a few years to when I used GNUCash everyday. It was nice. I was working off a desktop install that I had compiled mostly from scratch. It seems like suddenly the GNUCash people recommended not compiling yourself, and all the make scripts fell apart in my environment. They posted a message on the site about using a binary packages as the new norm, and here are all the ones we support. I ended up fixing the scripts myself, but that's not the point. Things are better now and I still use it everyday. But look at their FAQ page. Compare to the closest version of that page from MS here. This is a product that costs, essentially, $19 - $60 bucks, depending on the version. This type of difference in overall "polish" gets more and more pronounced all the time. And if it's that bad for Windows v. Linux, imagine how bad it is for OSX vs. Linux.

Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.

Yes. It used to be not compatible.

Now there is a standard tax file format that a lot of software is implementing.

Quicken and other packages also import this. TurboTax will ask you if you want to import from Quicken. Just say "yes" and then choose .TXF format when it asks you. Smooth sailing from there.

For the past 10 years, I have have been using TurboTax to file my taxes. I've been using TurboTax Online since 2001 (on Linux). I now use GnuCash to keep track of my finances and import the data into TurboTax Online. If you want more info, please see my journal entry on TurboTax Online.

For the record, though, I still mostly use pen and paper for D&D.