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Personal Finance Software for Unix?
pstreck asks: "I'm trying to find the best personal finance software for Unix. I've been using Quicken for a while, but unfortuantlly it won't run under Wine. I've tried gnucash but it just isn't up to par with what Quicken offers. What do you guys use?" While the free software versions may not quite be up to par with the current commercial offerings, it won't always be the case. The turning point can start now, of course. What finance software are you using now, what features do you like and what features do you think these software packages need?
most people and businesses are using finance applications where a simple paper record or a digital one would MORE than suffice. you have a number of records, they are stored, once every year / quarter or whenever u do your finances you tally them up, and sit down for a day or so and calculate everything. the thing about finance applications is that in general, it takes more time for people to USE them then to just do it by hand. people have forgotten how to do simple maths :-(
now not only do they not know how to use a pencil and paper, they cant even use a CALCULATOR! they need special software to do EVERYTHING for them
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
if you would have specified what it is that Gnucash won't do that Quicken does. "Isn't up to par..." doesn't really cut it. I've used Gnucash a little bit, and it seems to have everything that I would want - but my personal finances aren't so complicated that I can't manage them in my check register and savings book. I'm not really disciplined enough to enter every little thing into Gnucash often enough to make it worthwhile. My personal theory of finance is to earn way more money than I spend and always have enough in the bank to cover purchases, and not to have to rely on credit cards.
If there are specific features you're looking for, you should have mentioned them. Right now this is just another in a series of useless "Ask Slashdot" questions that indicate the poster didn't do any footwork on their own or even think very hard about the question.
I'd feel better if I were running a bootleg copy. But I stupidly paid retail for it.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I use GnuCash, and it has the ability to import QIF files (Quicken). I don't use it, so I can't comment on how well it works.
But it sounds to me like you are looking for a convenience. If the only reason you aren't using GnuCash is because you can't directly link to all those sources (401k, bank, CC), then it would seem that you are just a little lazy. Can't you just manually enter it? Yeah, I know, computers make things easier, and once you get used to them (lazy) then it is harder to do things for yourself. But I suppose that is why Windows is so popular.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yes it will. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but writing software like that is BORING. Take a look at the best open source software out there and you'll see that it is "interesting" software: operating systems, window managers, development tools. Financial software is the kind of boring crud that nobody writes for fun, and so something like GNU cash will progress until the easy features are done, and then the authors will realize they don't want to spend any more time on such an uninteresting piece of software, and they will move on to something more interesting. Some software is just so utterly uninteresting or unprestigious that nobody works on it for fun, you have to PAY them to work on it.
Well i did do research before a posted the question. and i never ran across Chritopher Browne's page in my searches. I went through the typical routes, google, freshmeat, sf. And i didnt find anything that was up to par. I had been using GNUCash for about 3 months and found it seriously lacking. So stop your grumbling, and thanks for the link.
Later,
Phil
see they're using the word 'Druid' instead of 'Wizard'
And that is why free software is failing on the desktop; if each package uses different terms for the same functionality is it any wonder that users are put off.
Bitch about Microsoft, logo-requirements and usability guidelines all you like, but if software written to those standards is usable by people without much computer knowledge then it is going to be used.
I work for an online brokerage firm, and a new feature slated to me rolled out is a "trading wizard". That's a generic enough term, you'd guess. Guess again.
We had to figure out a different name for it as the term has been trademarked/copywritten by another firm.
I don't know if this is the case here, but in addition to product differentiation, it's a good strategy to call a feature something other than the generic term that might first come to mind -- an open source project really can't afford lawsuits.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach