Crossover Gets Quicken

Jeremy White writes: "involved with the Wine project 4 years ago, a major personal goal for me was to switch my wife's computer to Linux. But there was a simple caveat: "No Quicken, No Linux." As of today, CrossOver Office now supports Quicken (and my wife was beta tester #1 *grin*). The new version, 1.2.0, also supports Visio and fixes a raft of bugs. The press release is at Codeweavers and a review can be found here. " I've got a similar situation - been running Quicken for the last ten years, and have only one data section lost, so this is pretty darn cool. And it freakin' works.

Comments

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't it funny that the CEO of Codeweavers has to submit the post to slashdot rather than waiting for fans to do it?... advertising!

Re:funny

[passthecrackpipe]

Maybe Jeremy is a regular Slashdot visitor and poster as well?

IT'S A MIRACLE

[timeOday]

This has been my major complaint about Wine for about 3 years!

Standard Wine?

[BJH]

Does this work with mainline Wine as well, or is it Crossover-only at the moment?
I know Codeweavers have been good about feeding fixes back into the mainline project (unlike WineX), and I hope they keep it up.

Re:Standard Wine?

[Captain Morgan]

Winex only feeds some patches back into mainline wine, codeweavers on the other hand feeds all of their patches back as far as anyone can tell.

Re:Standard Wine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Winex can only feed some back. They use code that is owned by others in the copy protection. I feel this is a valid reason not to.

It is the valid reason they are holding back the CD copyprotection stuff. Now tell me what is the valid reason they are holding back their DCOM architecture (the stuff that makes install shield work), and their DirectX infrastructure. They claimed for a long time the were going to release that stuff, but rewind and wine still don't have it after what a year and a half.... You tell me who has the community in the forefront. Codeweavers or Transgaming?.

Re:Standard Wine?

[Captain Pedantic]

Yeah. Let them give out broken code and let more people work on it. That is why people like to release stuff as open source in the first place.

Transgaming are evil. When a Debian developer wanted to package Winex (as he was entitled to under the license), Transgaming informed him that they would change the license to specifically change the license.

You can argue that Winex is good for your gaming needs on Linux, but don't EVER say that Transgaimng is good for the community.

Re:Standard Wine?

[Anonymous Coward]

letting people play their favourite game on their favourite OS for no extra cost than the game itself doesnt help the community?
people at winex have to make their earning with SOMETHING! i think they're doing great at showing the rest of the world how to make profit from software for linux.

but i guess that doesnt fit in your commie-kinda world view huh?

Re:Standard Wine?

[Captain Pedantic]

Vanilla Wine would have enabled people to play their favourite Windows-only game on their favourite OS, IF Transgaming hadn't said to them "don't bother coding any DirectX stuff as we are working on it and we will let you have ours".

This manoeuvre, carried out well over a year ago, effectively killed Vanilla Wine's ability to run games and left Transgaming in the position where they could extort their $60 a year.

There are plenty of examples of how to make money with Linux, without having to sabotage other projects in order to do so.

Re:Standard Wine?

[Fizzol]

>"don't bother coding any DirectX stuff as we are working on it and we will let you have ours". They never said that.

Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Space Coyote]

Was wondering if anyone familiar with Quicken and GnuCash could give a good comparison of the features and usability of both programs, from the standpoint of someone who wants to start managing his or her personal finances. Would it be worth it to buy crossover and quicken, or could the average user get the hang of GnuCash easily enough?

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[spagbol]

I have used both. GNUcash is a double entry system and has taught me lots about proper accounting. Quicken is more of a personal checkbook register. Quicken is probable easier to set up, GNUcash is better for more complex accounting.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[athakur999]

I tried using GNUcash a while ago. I don't know about Quicken, but at least compared to MS Money it definately fell short. GNUcash does a fair of telling you where you've been, but doesn't seem to have any functionality of telling you where you're going.

For example, in Money I can put in a schedule of all my paychecks, bills, etc., as well estimates of my monthly budget (how much I spend on gas, dining out, etc.). Money can them show me a pretty line graph of a day by day estimate of what my balance is going to look like for the next month, three months, year, whatever. This lets me locate possible trouble points well ahead of time and plan around them, instead of risking overdrafting my account.

You can also put in all your loans, credit cards, etc. with their interest rates, and put in how much you want to pay per month. Money can split up that money and tell you the best way to pay things off while minimizing your interest payments.

GNUcash may have these features now, if so please tell us!

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[jsled]

Scheduled Transactions are in CVS now, and could use some Feedback; they'll definitely be in 1.8, which we are hoping to get out in a couple/few months.

The more forward-looking stuff I hope to add for 2.0, which is quite a ways off. If you're interested in jumping in and getting something basic [like a report which would contain some of the functionality] done for 1.8, please do so. :)

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always hated Quicken. When it first came out, it was supposed to be hot, so I tried it, and couldn't stand it -- no double-entry, and you were forced to keep track of your accouting via a picture of a check on the screen (which I found insulting). After they bought my favorite competitor (Parsons software made several different packages, Quicken bought them, killed the accounting package, and sold the rest to someone else), I tried Quicken and decided that it had only gotten worse. Their feature which lessened data entry keystrokes by auto-completing vendor names assumed that I always spent exactly $10.47 at the grocery store, thus forcing me to increase the number of keystrokes. There was so much swearing that first day, that my wife went out and found Money Matters (I think it is called), which is a Java program, thus cross-platform, and a decent program at that.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Arethan]

I vote GnuCash. Seriously. All of the pretty graphs and predictions built into Quicken are great, but it is all absolutely useless when the data entry tools are borked. GnuCash uses a double entry system, which is far more sane than any single entry system I've every seen. (More resistant to typos as well.) And I can't believe that Quicken STILL doesn't have any way to tell you what your CLEARED balance is in your checking accounts. GnuCash has had this ever since I can remember, but I'll be damned if I can find a way to look at it in Quicken. Sure, the column is there, but other than the satisfaction of seeing a little "c" in the column for every transaction, I see no use for it in Quicken. My wife and I each keep track of our own accounts, and I'm consistantly able to tell you down to the penny how much money I have. And she is consistantly able to screw up her registers in Quicken because she can't see what her cleared balance is when she's comparing between Quicken and her online statements.

Like I said, GnuCash has the cleared balance neatly displayed at the top of the register at all times. It makes keeping your bank register and your finance software in sync much easier. But hey, I (and my wife) may just be unable to use Quicken properly. Which I must admit is odd, considering how easy GnuCash is for me to use on a daily basis. Plus, the learning curve was basically nil. I was up and running full time in less than 4 hours, and I have almost no experience tracking my finances this closely. (I used to just make sure I had a few thousand bucks in my account at all times, and then I could be pretty sure I wasn't going to over withdraw it.)

Kudos to the GnuCash team. My only complaint is that I can't download generic precompiled binaries off their website that will run on nearly all linux distros. But then again, that's not entirely their fault, considering how fucked up Linux gets in the cross distro compatibility area...

Anyhow, long story short.
By my vote: GnuCash == good. Quicken == garbage.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[bmwm3nut]

i used quicken for about 5 or 6 years and then i decided to make everything linux, so i had to switch to gnucash. i think gnucash is more true to real accounting pricipals than quicken is (it uses the double entry method). all of my quicken data converted over seamlessly and worked great. for most things i like gnucash better, and i suggest if you're going to start, to start with gnucash, the double entry accounting works better if you start that way rather than converting after you get used to quicken's way of doing things. the only thing that i like quicken for better is some of the reports. different graphs and reports are easier to make with quicken, but it looks like gnucash is getting better there. another thing that gnucash lacks is automatic calculation of amortizations. when i had quicken all i had to do was click a button every month to update my mortgage, with gnucash i have to type it in each month. overall i suggest you go with gnucash. did i mention the open xml data format too?

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[jsled]

Well, in CVS there's a Druid to help setup Mortgage/Loan-repayment Scheduled Transactions... I'd really appreciate you're trying it out, as I don't have a loan/mortgage myself, and it seems like everyone has slight differences in the way their's works, anyways.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[fo0bar]

Anyhow, long story short. By my vote: GnuCash == good. Quicken == garbage.

Sorry, I must butt in here. I've been using quicken for about 4 years now, and has work rather well for me.

Yes, you hit my one nerve: no quick way to see the cleared balance via the register page. HOWEVER, if you use an online service linked to quicken (I have the quicken option for Wells Fargo), you can see your cleared balance in the Online Center screen. The point is moot for me, though, because I basically treat each payment as if it were collected immediately. That cash is GONE from my checking account the moment I write that check. The result is I never go into the red, and don't have to worry about it.

Which brings me to the next item: bank integration. I don't forsee an open standard for online banking transactions anytime in the near future. It sucks, but it's the truth for now. In the mean time, quicken's integration with my bank for checking and saving (and investing once Wells Fargo gets off its ass) is a godsend. Makes personal finance about a million times easier when you have automatic reconciliation against the online register. Well worth the $7/mo.

Also, bill pay. Yes, I know every web site under the sun offers bill pay these days, but it's so convienent to automatically send the request to pay Capital One the balance of whatever's in my Capital One account this month, on a certain date. And the fact that it's all in one place is convienent.

My car loan. It's nice to see a chart of my car's equity from the loan payments vs. current value. Also I can see exactly how much out of my monthly $400 payment goes toward interest (at that point I break down and cry, maybe it's not such a good feature).

Basically, it fits my needs. I like it, A LOT. You may not, great. Continue to use GnuCash. Each person has different needs.

EOF

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[RedWizzard]

I haven't used Quicken, but I do use GnuCash. It's pretty good, certainly perfectly adequate for personal use and headed toward being a decent small business package, too. I don't know what Quicken is capable of but some of the nicer features in GnuCash are the true double-entry nature of it (which Quicken doesn't have) and the ability to handle stocks and other securities in any currency.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Quicken for 7 years, and find it does most things I need, but that it doesn't handle foreign currencies well.

Say you have a foreign currency bank account set up, and pay expenses from it. The home currency equivalent of the expense seems to be calculated 'on the fly', using the exchange rate set up in the system. So if you change today's excahnge rate, the home currency equivalent values of all previous years' transactions also change, RETROSPECTIVELY.
That's not my idea of how an accounting package should work.

Does anyone know if GnuCash handles this better ?

TIA

RB

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

In your register view, sort the little status column by clicking on the column header... all items should sort such that you can see the balance in the column to the right. it's very strange looking but if memory serves, will do the trick...

CHACHI!

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[nathanh]

In your register view, sort the little status column by clicking on the column header... all items should sort such that you can see the balance in the column to the right. it's very strange looking but if memory serves, will do the trick...

That's not what he means. By "cleared" he means that when he writes the cheque is different to when the cheque is cashed. Quicken assumes that the cash is gone as soon as you write the cheque. GNUcash uses double-entry accounting so you can make it clear that there's a time-delay between writing a cheque and the recipient cashing the cheque.

I find GNUcash is an excellent double-entry ledger but I find it lacking for forecasts and graphing. GNUcash also has many interface bugs and uglies.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Scratch-O-Matic]

That's not what he means. By "cleared" he means...

I believe the parent to your post is correct. If you sort the register by the "cleared" column, then the cleared balance will appear with the entry that contains the last cleared transaction. All balances shown after that will be based on uncleared transactions, eg. checks that have not been cashed.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Lumpy]

GnuCash is great with one major horrible problem..

Almost noone can install it without spending nights fighting with it's need for bleeding edge libs. The developers are not interested in anyone using their software that is not a programmer... Otherwise they would offer a statically linked version for download that eliminates the needs for bizzare and pre-pre alpha libs.

I reccomend to all my newbie-linux users and anyone else to stay away from GnuCash until the developers start desiring that people use it by releasing something that is installable (again statically linked) This has been asked in their mailing lists before and they basically flamed the people hard that asked.

GnuCash is a nice project that hopefully someday will actually become useable to the regular user.. until then... stay away from it.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[smcdow]

By my vote: GnuCash == good. Quicken == garbage

My vote:
Electronic/Automated bill paying (i.e. Checkfree) == Good.
Printing out checks and USPS mailing them == BAD.

Quicken currently suports electronic bill pay via Checkfree.
When Gnucash starts supporing Checkfree (or visa versa) then I'll start using it.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Verteiron]

apt-get install gnucash works for me :)

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Robert The Coward]

Unless you use RedCarpet and then you just put a Check in GNUCash and it gets installed. It have been using Qucken since 2.0 Dos Version not likely to change now. I like the way quicken handles data entry. By the way I have used double entry accounting on both paper and Peachtree which GNUCash works alot like.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

cd /usr/ports/deskutils/gnucash; sudo make install

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[mrroach]

Why are dependencies considered harmful!? Whose job is it to package the program, the author or the distribution? Whose fault is it if the packaging system makes your life miserable?

It is ridiculous to flame the whole project just becuase you were unable to install the necessary libraries. Get yourself a real package management system if you can't DIY. Try debian, gentoo, freebsd, mandrake and many, many others.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[HiThere]

apt-get? But he was talking about the installation for those who weren't programmers. I don't think that describes many who are using Debian, and the Red Hat version of apt-get still needs a bit of work.

So instead:
Red Hat -> up2date
Mandrake -> Mandrake update (or URPMI ... I'm not quite sure what that means, but it seems to be Mandrake's answer to apt-get)
SuSE -> yast2? I think that's right, but this might just be a package manager.
Libra -> apt-get (It may have some graphics front end, but I don't know it.)

This is an area where the distributions don't seem to have yet come to an agreement as to just how to proceed. They all have tools for the job, but the tools differ from distribution to distribution. And they have different limitations, e.g., the Red Hat up2date doesn't seem to work unless you have a current subscription to the Red Hat network. And it limits the number of machines that you can use it on. (This is probably why they aren't supportive of the work to get apt-get working on their distribution.)

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Rydia]

YaST 2 is mostly a configuration application, with a section for package management of rpms from the install media and whatever they have mucking around on their servers. It would work great if gnucash was part of their distribution, but last I checked it was just an ansulary app, and therefore didn't have the updates available through YOU (YaST Online Update).

On the other hand, it comes with pharmacy and (I think) rpm-get, so it has CVS and distribution decently covered.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Cro Magnon]

Yeah, and Debian is much easier to install than Gnucash (from source)

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Cro Magnon]

I use CBB. It's old and I'm not sure if it's still being maintained, but it's easy to install.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok under your precious debian install Gnucash 1.8 oh wait you can't. as it is the latest release with all the goodies and you have ony 1.4 available to you.

Think and then post... not the other way around dummy...

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Anonymous Coward]

packageing system??? what the hell are you talking about?

the only way you can get the latest Gnucash is by downloading the sourcecode. and the only Gnucash that has all the features everyone wants is the latest one.

so tell me again how the hell does a pacaging system fit into this? and please again explain how the developers are not responsible for putting their product in a way that it can be used?

it takes ZERO effort to compile it statically yet they refuse to take the time to do it..

SO what part of Gnucash did you write? and are you the one that act's like the proverbial prince that all must bow to? Quit acting like spoiled brats and RELEASE A STATICALLY LINKED GNUCASH you lazy bums..

It's the inability to be professional like the OO and MOZ crowd that hurts linux the most.. and GnuCash is very uinprofessional in how they act and distribute.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[RedWizzard]

Yes it does. You have trading accounts which record the actual conversion from one currency to another. These accounts represent the purchase of foreign currency and you can then transfer that foreign ammount to a dedicated foreign currency account.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[budgenator]

I went rounds with my credit union about cleared transactions basicaly they said local transaction have to be available in 2 business days,per federal regualtions, but don't have to stay available! I'm not a banking lawyer so I got a new bank.

Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash

[nathanh]

Oh, it's obvious in hindsight but I didn't think of it that way! That's a neat way of making Quicken show the cleared balance. Thanks for the tip.

quickbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

how bout quickbooks pro?

Re:quickbooks

[whatparadox]

I've read on Quickbooks site (don't want to look for it again) that they do not currently plan, or forsee planning on porting Quickbooks to anything else.

Re:quickbooks

[ceejayoz]

No, but they haven't ported Quicken either. Intuit had nothing to do with this. This is just a way to run Quicken on Linux using an emulator, not an actual port of the software.

Re:quickbooks

[roybentley]

i use it at work.. absoulte trash. you may be okay unless you keep inventory in your personal finances. ;-)

Re:quickbooks

[Bill Dimm]

I don't know about Quickbooks Pro on Wine, but I use Quickbooks 2000 (non-Pro) on Win4Lin and it works fine. It also works for Internet Explorer, PWS, eFax, etc.

Broken Link

[dorzak]

The first link is broken.....

Re:Broken Link

[Anonymous Coward]

And the second link is about windependece not a review of codeweavers. oi poloi!

Re:Broken Link

[bucklesl]

The first link is broken.....

Well, there CAN only be one..*ahem* working link, that is. Thank goodness my quicken -ing can begin.

now if only

[Anonymous Coward]

it supported DX 8.1
*sigh*

Re:now if only

[Anonymous Coward]

...*OR* if only companies would support openGL and Linux. The sooner we're away from DirectX, the better. *sigh*

Re:now if only

[spectral]

Although I hate microsoft as much as anyone else (I use it as my main OS because VMWare refused to work, no matter what I tried, and I need IE working for web development, sad, but true), I can't say that DirectX now is all that bad. I personally find it much, much more difficult to code for than OpenGL, but the way it leads standards does seem (to me at least) to benefit everyone. I don't see standardized 3D Positional audio under linux. Until OGL 1.4 there weren't even standardized Pixel/Vertex shaders, were there? Yeah, Direct3D has different versions of them, but code for one and it will work on all cards claiming to support that version of DirectX. DX9 requires all floating point pipelines, etc. Which makes things look better. Yeah, maybe hardware vendors would eventually have done this on their own, but I don't see OpenGL leading them to do it NOW and not later.

DirectX is a horrible API, especially to program for, and definitely for cross-platform, but it at least gets new technology "standardized" quicker. That being said, I code only OpenGL, I like the portability :) Comments welcome, but this is how I personally see the situation.

Re:now if only

[handsomepete]

That's a good point.

I suppose DirectX does push new features of video cards, and that's something I can appreciate. It's all well and good to have the portability of OpenGL, but there has to be something that motivates hardware sales and keeps innovation going (I'm of the mind that the gaming community is a big part of the reason the hardware manufacturers are able to stay alive in the consumer market, but what do I know). In theory it would probably be best for *all* game makers to use OpenGL to help motivate the developers, but in practice I realize that must be impractical considering target market/budget/timeframe concerns. It just bothers me to see OpenGL get so frequently ignored in favor of DirectX.

However, I can only wonder how accepted DirectX would be if it were ported to Linux by Microsoft. For the record I've never played with WineX, but I heard it could run Warcraft III not too long after its release. That's pretty gosh durn impressive.

Re:now if only

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see standardized 3D Positional audio under linux.

OpenAL

The problem is, there are standards, but everyone is so enamored with the DirectX release of the week, they never see them.

What?

[buzzbomb]

Oooh...XHTML2 links must look like this:

http://www/about/press_releases/?id=20020807

I guess I need Mozilla 2.0 to use it. ;)

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't upgrade it's your own fault!

The correct link

[marcelkiel]

CodeWeavers.com

"Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!"

Links

[mrmag00]

Oh so interesting topic - yet so many broken links! Heellllppp!!

Codeweavers Press Release

Don't know about the rest though.

Re:Links

[mrmag00]

Ack, I'm an idiot.
The review link also didnt load for me, maybe it was slashdotted after a couple seconds, but I found this because I wanted to see how well it worked :)

Looks neat.

Cool

[Aknaton]

but if I really wanted to switch, I would have just bought a copy of VMWare.

Re:Cool

[mark_lybarger]

with vmware you need a licensed copy of the resident operating system, in this case one of the Microsoft strains. using codeweaver's product, as i understand it, that need is eliminated. it allows you to install windows software on a linux system.

Re:Cool

[iamwhatiseem]

VMWare?? Have you ever tried VMWare? While I appreciate the hard work folks put into that project, it is still not a solution at all.
For starters, you have to have Windows installed, which sorta defeats the whole thing. I would MUCH rather dual boot than put up with the extreme pain from the slow crawl of VMWare.
I have Crossover installed, and I will say thusfar it is a thing of beauty. Not only does it work, but it (I believe) actually launches many of the apps faster than Windoze does!

How well does Internet Explorer work?

[e_n_d_o]

I'd love to hear anyone's experience using CrossOver as a method to run Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing Web applications from a Linux machine. I need IE to behave just like it does on Windows, such that I can test applications and have the results be entirely indicative of their behavior on a real Windows machine. I'd also like to run multiple versions of IE, which is impossible without multiple machines or a VM.

I've tried earlier versions of CrossOver (to get QuickTime support), and while it does "work", the startup time is terrible and it does not work well with multiple desktops. (The QuickTime window is present on ALL desktops and does not behave well with the window manager (Sawfish)).

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[repoleved]

e_n_d_o said:I'd love to hear anyone's experience using CrossOver as a method to run Internet Explorer for the purpose of testing Web applications from a Linux machine. I need IE to behave just like it does on Windows, such that I can test applications and have the results be entirely indicative of their behavior on a real Windows machine. I'd also like to run multiple versions of IE, which is impossible without multiple machines or a VM.

This job sounds more ideal for VMWare, since you could get multiple machines running with different versions of internet explorer, whereas that might be difficult/inconvenient with wine...

As a side note, mozilla now has an Internet Explorer theme which is good enough to fool most people... ;-)

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[dcstimm]

it works great for me! maybe you need a faster computer? What is you hdparm -t /dev/hdx output? maybe you didnt optimize your harddrive? here is my output : /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.82 seconds = 35.75 MB/sec (higher MB/sec the better)

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[e_n_d_o]

One minor clarification: I've used earlier versions of the CrossOver plug-in... I don't have any experience with the Office version, or its performance.

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[kableh]

I used Crossover Office exclusively as an Outlook Client and Internet Explorer for about 2 months. GUI bugs and other little problems drove me nuts in OUTLOOK, but it was good enough. IE worked fairly well, allowing me to do my online banking, but that was about it. Flash and Media Player 6.4 did work within it, but it seemed to crash just as frequently as it did on Windows =/.

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[sprzepiora]

I use ie 6 daily with crossover. I havn't had a problem with the last release of crossover.

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[markus]

I haven't tested the newest version of CrossOver, yet, so support for IE might have improved by now. As for testing compatibility of web sites, my main problems were that:

1. IE would not always start under Linux, whereas all the other office programs always worked fine (with a few minor bugs). I never figured out why IE would sometimes just refuse to run.
2. IE doesn't come with all the neccessary components and I could never work out how to install them afterwards. This means, if your web page requires Asian fonts or non-standard plugins, then there really isn't too much you can do.

Apart from these restrictions (which might very well be fixed with the new release of CrossOver), I have successfully tested my web pages using IE on Linux.

I never had the need to run multiple instances of IE at the same time, but you can do so pretty easily under Linux. If I had to do this, I'd probably just use multiple instances of User Mode Linux, because it gives full guaranteed isolation and it is pretty straight forward to set up for this purpose. If you don't quite need this much isolation, then there probably is some way you can make CrossOver run multiple instances of Wine (possibly by using some "chroot()" tricks).

Re:How well does Internet Explorer work?

[crisco]

I'm curious about this as well, especially the correctness part and multiple versions (although I'm hearing more and more of bugs in IE6 that only show up on specific machines, the web designer's nightmare)

Sure, VMWare would work, but at $300 a pop I might as well throw together a multi-boot system specifically for testing.

I know how deep IE gets its roots inside windows, so I can't imagine multiple versions running off one install of Codeweaver or Wine. But what if I installed each as a different user, can I separate out the Wine/Codeweaver installations per user to create a different IE install for each user?

The possibility of Macromedia stuff on Linux sounds rather nice, Dreamweaver MX provides a pointy clicky interface to PHP/MySQL, if the authoring programs and the app server can all live on the same machine that might prove attractive to those that don't want the pointy clicky web designers screwing with the live server.

That's nice.

[acceleriter]

If I wanted to endure Quicken's forced registration, ceaseless marketing spam, and in-program ads, and it's requirement that you funnel online access to your accounts through Intuit, I'd sign right up. But I don't, so I've switched to GNUcash and haven't looked back.

Re:That's nice.

[Hollins]

All of these nuisances are avoidable in Quicken. Not surprisingly, Microsoft Money is worse. It even hijacks your web browser whenever you visit a site where money can be spent.

In my opinion, the features of Quicken far outweigh its shortcomings. With a bank and brokerage that support online updating, I can download and reconcile all transactions without having to do a cumbersome, and flakey, file import. I pay bills by entering them in the register, then clicking 'online update'. Its investment tracking tools are unsurpassed. It tracks everything from mortgage interest to capital gains to IRA contributions to tell me where I stand with the government at any moment. gnuCash is coming along, but it's closer to managing your finances with a spreadsheet than the features Quicken and Money have. With a little finagling, I've managed to turn off all the ads, and I've never given any information to Intuit's website.

And don't get me started on using Quicken and Turbo Tax in April.

Re:That's nice.

[demaria]

How do you turn off the in programs ads and popups saying "April 15th is coming..." ?

Re:That's nice.

[Hollins]

Here's all the things I had to do that i remember:

• Under the 'General' tab of quicken options, select "Hide advertisements in online financial center"
• Under the 'Startup' tab, select 'none'
• Customize the 'My Finances' page to remove the alerts box. This feature does nothing for me, anyway.
• Right-click the alert bar at the bottom and select the option that removes the alert bar.
• Remove all Quicken items from Windows' Start folder.

That's all I remember. Like I said, it took some doing, but I don't remember seeing an ad since January.

Re:That's nice.

[BitHive]

Yeah, a simple "Dude, April 15th was yesterday!" popup would work just fine, thank you.

Re:That's nice.

[ColaMan]

*IRA* contributions?
er, shouldn't that be a little more underhanded and discreet?

I love this, first Winex 2.1 and now this

[dcstimm]

I love linux, I am glad, that companies are working make usable programs out of opensource code, I like the idea that if I pay them $39.99 they will support me on installing Office, and Quicktime on my computer. and Since I bought the Codeweaver plugins I get a discount on this. I think its a very good deal! Now if I could only get snood (snood.com) running in wine I would be happy.

Re:I love this, first Winex 2.1 and now this

[quinto2000]

Snood for the masses. I actually went to the trouble to PAY for Snood when I was using Windows, so I was a little bummed that I couldn't use it on Linux. But then I discovered the above solution. I also played the game that Snood was a ripoff of via an NES emulator.

Re:I love this, first Winex 2.1 and now this

[dcstimm]

frozen bubble is just not the same as snood, no puzzle level, no mouse support, no cute faces. Oh well:-)

Re:I love this, first Winex 2.1 and now this

[quinto2000]

True. It's more like the arcade game that also inspired snood. It's getting better though. Try the two-player version.

Why not support the native Linux alternative?

[Rude Turnip]

Why not give Kapital, put out by The Kompany, a try? Kapital is essentially a klone (pun intended) of Quicken for Linux. From what I read on their site, it has most of the features of Quicken, but no automatic online bank dowloads.

Re:Why not support the native Linux alternative?

[npietraniec]

It doesn't look like it's at 1.0 yet... They also say kde 2.1 is required. Will it work with 3.0?

Re:Why not support the native Linux alternative?

[tube013]

according to a message to their zaurus app mailing list:

From: Shawn Gordon
Reply-To: thekompany.com
To: thekompany.com
Subject: Re: [Tkc] tkcKapital not updated
Date: 06 Aug 2002 19:39:15 -0700
trying to get it built right now - we'd been updating Kapital to KDE3 and it caused some problems with the engine for Qte2x, I believe we got them resolved and are testing now.

At 07:27 PM 8/6/2002, you wrote:
The tkcKapital ipkg is not current, its still at 3 while everything else is at 13. I was wondering when to expect the current version.

Thank You,
Ian Oakes

Re:Why not support the native Linux alternative?

[mpsmps]

Um... No automatic online bank downloads is a pretty big "but". I think I'll wait.

Re:Why not support the native Linux alternative?

[mccalli]

From the web page:
"The expected final release date of Kapital 1.0 is in June 2002"

Hmm...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is CrossOver but my measuring-stick with WINE is when it can run applications written ten years ago and slowly modified to work in newer versions of Windows. I'm talking your Jasc PaintShopPro's, your Adobe and Macromedia's, your unclean evolutionised code.

Can they run any of these?

Focus on Linux apps

[papasui]

Whats the point of turning linux into a windows machine? If you want to run Windows programs stabably you have this OS called Windows 2000. Seriously this isn't ment to troll or be a flambait, but the apps make the OS why not focus on making great apps for linux instead of making linux this OS that can run Windows apps.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Anonymous Coward]

we know u r hard with a capital D

but for others, it makes the transition easier

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Anonymous Coward]

It adds tremendous value to Linux...Linux needs to provide a compelling reason for the average user to ask for it when they buy their next PC. We aren't going to get them to upgrade, but a Dell or other manufacturer would consider putting it on where customers want the features of Linux and backwards compatability for their legacy windows apps. If there is no transition path, then there is no transition -- Linux on the desktop falls off the cliff.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[DearSlashdot]

I agree with you to a point. It would be no good to be just a windows clone. However, I think that Quickbooks (which is discussed in the article) is a "killer conversion" app. Many many small businesses run Quickbooks as their mission-critical system. They could get along fine with Mozilla, Staroffice instead of IE or MS office. But the accounting software is the last thing they are going to screw with.

I think this is especially useful when it comes time to expand. When an office suddenly needs two PCs, the logical step is a network. Maybe even a server. That's where sticker shock for a Win2k network kicks in, and where the free (beer) side of Linux can be a huge blessing. Without Quickbooks, moving away from Windows will be painful (espcially since the last time I checked, you can't export your data from Quickbooks).

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[whatparadox]

As the IT Dept for a small company I second that. Hell, its half the reason we have PCs instead of straight Macs.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[mrmag00]

Migration is the key though. You can't open all Microsoft documents that other people send you in Linux. Nor is GNUCASH equal to Quicken feature wise. The list goes on.

Microsoft does the exact same thing - ever wondered why Microsoft didn't jump to convert the desktop version of Windows to a FAR better kernel (NT) until only recently (Windows XP)? Because it lost compatability with most DOS/16-bit programs. They did their best to make as much legacy work as possible, and just let time pass by to let the old applications weed out.

Besides, its too cool to say My OS supports Your OS but Your OS Hates Mine.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[typedef]

Yeah, but why the hell does the 'average user' need to run Linux? Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. Its my primary operatiing system and I wouldn't even consider using anything else. But I frankly wouldn't find it very useful if I weren't a programmer, and I wouldn't find it very fun if I didn't like to tinker. Linux (or any Unix for that matter) isn't an operating system for your grandmother to use on her E-Machine. Its simply best kept in the hands of power-users for the desktop, and otherwise it should be kept on the server.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf? if you want windowz programs to operate "stabably" than you have to BUY windows 2000... thats what 200? 300? dollars? linux=free and a hell of a lot more stable than win2k, and it runs on a greater ammnt of machines... write for windows w/codeweaver in mind and release programs at the same time for both linux and windows... which would please consumers and customers alike... wether or not their tech savvy enough to use linux. they have a choice, which could end a lot of this crap were seeing now

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what alternate reality you live in buy I leave my Windows 2000 desktop running 24/7 for weeks at a time. The only time I reboot is when I change drivers or boot into Linux.

Hell, NT 4 is just as stable as Linux.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[James Foster]

I see your point, but there is a point. For me, the attractiveness of Linux is taking power away from ms and hopefully one day having the majority of desktop computers running an OS that is open source. We all know the advantages of that.
Linux is a pretty good OS, but if it were to be adopted as a primary OS for desktop PCs, then I think you would see it become a breath-taking OS, as far more people would work on it (compared with the hundereds/thousands) that already do.
That's why I would want to run Linux as opposed to Win2k (I am currently typing this on Win2k, by the way).
There are two main reasons why I would want Linux to run Windows apps:
- It would provide a "bridge" to Linux: I, and others would be able to cross over to Linux without having to replace every single piece of software all at once.

- I would far prefer an OS that can run both Linux and Windows apps, compared to an OS which can only run one environment's apps.

It's pretty simple... it's the same as what ms have done. You create things that offer the widest range of support, and then they get adopted.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Sloppy]

Emulators let you run some app that you feel you "have to" while you get to continue using your computer for other things at the same time (downloading something, compiling, whatever). Rebooting or having multiple computers with KVM, is inconvenient and more expensive. Who wants to repartition their drive to hold another OS, and then drop everything they're doing and reboot, just so they can enter a check or something like that?

Yes, developing native apps is a good idea, too. But that only helps sometimes. Other times, there's some sort of lockin that puts a cost on switching apps, which can outweigh other concerns.

Oh, BTW... Windows 2000 won't be available/supported/bugfixed forever. It is doomed, and by Microsoft's own hand. And then there won't be any supported stable platform for running Windows apps, except WINE and related projects.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[dan_bethe]

Good question. Especially when things like Appgen and MyBooks and Moneydance!

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[MADCOWbeserk]

I fully agree, every small business seems to use Quickbooks. It is very well written and makes running a business much easier. Invoicing and general accounting are much easier with quickboooks, in the small business world.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[thales]

Even worse, what's the point of giving software venders an excuse not to port software over to Linux?

Commodore introduced the C128 that could run Aplications in C128 mode or C64 mode. Allmost no aplications were developed for C128 mode because all the C128 users could run C64 Aplications in C64 mode.

IBM had OS/2 that could run Windows Aplications, and few venders bothered with writting OS/2 native aplications.

There is little chance that Wine will ever run Windows applications as good as they run on Windows. There is a chance that they will run good enough to give venders an excuse not to bother creating real Linux versions of their software.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[rseuhs]

Whats the point of turning linux into a windows machine?

There is no point in that.

But you should be able to run legacy-apps.

You know, just like Win16 could run DOS apps and Win9x could run Win16 apps and WinXP can run Win9x apps.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[_Sprocket_]

If you want to run Windows programs stabably you have this OS called Windows 2000.

First off, I think I agree with you in principle. I'd prefer native Linux apps.

Having said that, Win2K is loosing its lustre. I use to consider it the closest thing to a shining example of a decent OS from Microsoft. But with SP3's EULA, its plain that Win2K is headed down the same road as WinXP and anything else that will come from Microsoft in the near future.

Its no suprise. We all knew Microsoft was going in that direction. Its one of the reasons I have made Linux my preferred platform. But its a shame that Win2K becomes less and less viable an option.

On a side note - I believe Moore's Law has turned to Linux's advantage. Theres only so much Windows can do with additional horsepower (bashing aside). But all those extra cycles can be put to excellent use by Linux as it crunches that extra compatability layer / emulation layer. Linux gains applications that, while they may not (although sometimes do) run as efficiently on Linux as they do on Windows, appear to run just as well to the end user.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[ppetrakis]

Agreed. Even across the same version of windows on different architectures.
Alpha/NT suffered from the same problem. The emulator/translator worked well enough that it took the pressure off the software vendors to provide native ports. Actually we'll probably see this same behavior with Itanium on windows since 2K/XP includes "wow!32" which is an offshoot of the Alpha binary translator/emulator.

WINE is nice and it serves a purpose though in the long run I think it will hurt linux. Instead I think we would be better served by lobbying software vendors to switch their development environment to Borland C++ Builder 6/Kylix 3.0 so they can target both platforms with minimal porting effort. QT is nice but it's IDE is nowhere near as well designed and convenient as borland's.

As I continue this rant I'm disappointed at the lack of free apps written using kylix, A search on FM shows a lowly 15 projects... I know that cross arch portability is important though I'm an "Alpha guy" I accept that 99% of the commercial software available for Linux is x86 centric. Developers shouldn't be holding themselves back because of a minority like ours.

Peter

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[Perl-Pusher]

Alot depends on your machine. Windows 2000 is incredibly stable on decent hardware. But try upgrading an older system that previously ran Win9x. Your results may vary considerably. I believe that microsoft's days are numbered. Has anybody ever completly held on to a large lucrative monopoly for an extended period of time? IBM, AT&T,Ford, Xerox,Railroad companies etc. have all held absolute monopolies at one time and lost them. The companies didn't disappear, but they lost their unfair advantage. Linux isn't going to kill Microsoft, but given time, it will continue to gnaw away at their market share. Time is on our side. Remove the operating system monopoly and they then have to compete fairly like everyone else. Nobody is buying their software is a service licensing scheme. I think the ability to run windows apps through wine is a big thing for developers. They don't have to reinvent their software, as long as they work with wine to ensure compatibility they can increase their market share without having to invest heavily with little return.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[pmz]

And then there won't be any supported stable platform for running Windows apps, except WINE and related projects.

This is very true. Even though Open Source software is often accused of volatility, it has an inherent stability as well, because the motives driving it are different. As projects like WINE mature, I would bet that whole consulting businesses develop around supporting Windows applications that, ironically, no longer work in Windows.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[HiThere]

Whats the point of turning linux into a windows machine? If you want to run Windows programs stabably you have this OS called Windows 2000.

I have these issues with the licenses that MS has been foisting on people. I can pick and choose among applications, and only use those I really need (native will always have the potential to be superior to emulated, but won't always exist in a stable form). Then I can decide if I can stand their licenses.

Face it, Linux end-user applications are still far behind their Windows counterparts. The current GUI desktops haven't even existed in a stable form for more than two or three years (I'm not counting older ones like fvm, etc.). So the applications haven't had long to develop. If KWord can now generate useable indicies and tables of contents, it's a brand new feature. And those are, to my mind, basic parts of what it means to be a word processor. Klyx/Lyx has not been stable, and isn't directed at the end user. Etc. And you can generalize from word processors to all other aspects of the user interface. Browsers for Linux have only become comparable during this past year. Etc. I may prefer KMail, but that's me. Most end-users have a different expectation. Perhaps Nautilus is now ready. Mozilla is tremendoulsy improved over last year, but still has a few warts (it's my primary browser on windows now). The only way that Konqueror could obviously improve would be to avoid crashing when a window is closed. This doesn't happen ofter, and doesn't seem to cause any problems, but it is annoying -- Sorry, I just thought of another improvement, allow type size modifications by web site.

So I think that the major Linux applications are nearly ready for the unskilled users, which is almost as much as I can say for the windows variants (some days I work on in-house tech-support). But they've gotten to that state very recently, and still have a few rough edges to polish. (OTOH, how many rough edges are worth $200/year plus and invasive and controlling license?)

I want a windows emulator that will run Encore Music composition software from Passport Designs. This program was abandoned, and the latest version runs on Win95, but not on Win98. I have seen no Linux software that does the same job (or Windows software, for that matter). Unfortunately, it saves it's files in a proprietary format. It can export MIDI files, but this causes a loss in quantization (this is primarily a score editing program which can also play music). So a *REALLY GOOD* emulation appears to be the only answer. Still, I feel that Transgaming is likely to come up with an answer to my needs before CodeWeavers do. But I doubt that either would tell me, or even know, if they had come up with the emulator that I needed.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[budgenator]

I have to use quickbooks 2002 basic here at work and the part I actualy see is a web browser, probably a modified version of IE. It says so as it fires up Opening Quickbooks Web Browser. You do the same thing with gnuCash, open a web browser to use it. sure Quickbooks uses a lot more java and javascript or VB and hides it extremely. Linux has all of the right tools, Mozillia, apache, java, Postgress/MySql/Oracle not to mention eperl and php. Actualy I think most of the heavy lifting in the quickbooks gui is done with java.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[WNight]

That's a valid question, but really I think it's the newbies who would most benefit from Linux.

People want a computer that doesn't crash, that "does email" and lets them write a letter, etc.

A Linux PC can do that. Give them an icon that says "Internet / WWW", "EMail", and "Word Processor" and that's 90% of what they want to do. Linux can boot extremely quickly without all the general-use stuff running, and can be locked down very tight so the users can screw it up.

Hell, you know how Linux users say that "Virus can't wipe out the system, just the user files!", that's just begging for a cron job backing things up, saving the diffs. Got a virus (trojan really, or deleted something accidentally)? Just go into the wayback machine and grab an old copy.

Toss it on a journalling FS and you have something that'll survive being unplugged while running.

It's the intermediate users, those who have been taught to click "Outlook" for email, "IE" for web, and "MS Word" for word processing who are the hardest to convert. They know enough to do what they want and are desperately afraid of losing that ability, they need much convincing before being willing to switch, even if they acknowledge that crashes and email viruses lose data for them all the time.

You can make and sell a $350 computer that does what most people want, never crashes, is *very* reliable wrt losing data, and is remotely adminable without opening up huge security holes (ie, cheap support costs.) With DeCSS (and another $50 for a DVD player) you can even make it an entertainment center. Sell it for $400 and make a profit on it.

That's the use the "average" person has for Linux.

Crossover vs. WINE

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference, in a nutshell?

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[slickwillie]

Does it automatically schedule version upgrades and payments to M$, or do you have to put those in manually?

My $0.02

[saxman57]

I bought this when 1.0 came out and upgraded to 1.1. Under 1.1 it was much improved but the reality is if I need to run MS Office applications under Linux, I'll do it in VMWare. I'm sure the 1.2 is improved and it is certainly cheaper then VMWare but I don't think it could be used effectively in a production environment by normal business users.

Re:My $0.02

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Too slow? Too buggy?

I've been running Quicken for a while under wine..

[npietraniec]

I've been running Quicken for a while under wine... It never ran perfect, just good enough. This might be it though, especially since I can get a discount for having purchased crossover plugin. Codeweavers is a great company.

This is very good news...

[Tyreth]

I think my mum might even be pleased. The press release says "full support for QuickBooks will be forthcoming in the near future". After that I'll have everything my mother needs.

I've been slowly drawing my mother over to Linux. I'm using it and say "Mum come and look at this". And I show her this feature (the updated weather icon in gnome) or that feature, and she says "Can I do that?". So I reply "Sorry mum, you're using windows."

Perhaps soon I'll be able to switch her over at work. She needs quicken and quickbooks for her work since we send that file format off to the accountant.

Re:This is very good news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing scarier than someone using Quicken is someone who assumes that Quickbooks is an appropriate program to keep track of business finances.

Re:This is very good news...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an annoying zealot. Die.

Re:This is very good news...

[Tyreth]

I should really check with my parents accountant to find out if the Quicken/Quickbooks software is the only financial software he supports. That would be pretty stupid wouldn't it?

Here is the correct link . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . for the review by DesktopLinux.com of CrossOver Office 1.2: Quicken and QuickBooks and Visio, oh my! (on Linux, that is). In the article, DesktopLinux.com founder and executive editor Rick Lehrbaum previews a beta version of CodeWeavers CrossOver Office 1.2, which now supports Quicken and Visio (among other enhancements). Lehrbaum also interviews CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White, to learn more about what else is coming, and what it takes for new apps to be added to CrossOver Office's support.

Re:All good and cute

[Anonymous Coward]

I use crossover plug to run Office 97 and it randomly locks up all the time.

I think you've got it all wrong. This means that it is is far closer to the native windows environment than anybody realized. You should post your success to the wine devlelopers immediately.

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[jsled]

I'm working hard to get that into 1.8. ;)

For those asking about rolling in changes to Wine

[Critical_]

I e-mailed Mr. White a while back when Office 1.0 was released. He told me that they will be rolling all the changes back into the wine tree. For the money you pay, you get support plus the nifty installer. I am very pleased with their work and have purchased a copy. In the desktoplinux.com interview, Mr. White says they have gone past the 10,000 mark. People say that you can't make money of open-source but Crossover is doing a decent job. They are rolling changes back and offering a product that people want.

One thing I want to know is how soon the specific Quicken patches will the rolled back into the Wine main tree. Any ideas?

Well, thats it

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like this is the final blow for Microsoft. We all knew Linux was going to take over the desktop market, and now it is going to be funny watching it happen over the next few days.

Re:Well, thats it

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, you are right.

Calling my broker to sell MSFT right now!!!

Gnucash development continues

[Goonie]

Amongst other things, scheduled transactions are in CVS now. A fair bit of the development has been on business features rather than personal financial management gloss though, AFAIK (I'm no longer directly involved - I have a thesis to do :).

Re:For those asking about rolling in changes to Wi

[jeremy_white]

The patches will start rolling in next week as we merge our tree with the WineHQ tree.
We only keep Wine patches out while we're stabilizing a version of CrossOver.
Cheers,
Jeremy

MYOB?

[Espressoman]

Personally I'd love to see the popular small business accounting package MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) supported. Has anyone had any luck getting this to run with any of the WINE flavors out there?

Re:MYOB?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure MYOB is pretty much an Australia-only product. They may be selling OS but I think Australia is the only place where they are a dominant product. At the recent Telstra Small Business Awards held in Perth, the MYOB spokesperson spent quite some time talking about MYOB's origins as an Australian small business.

If this is correct I doubt MYOB is likely to be focussed on by Codeweavers. Of course that doesn't mean that MYOB won't work under wine.

I'm not sure if MYOB has any plans for a linux/unix port. Not impossible - in a global sense it is a niche product. If Australian small businesses start moving towards linux, they may be proactive in porting their application.

As always - don't hold your breath

Re:MYOB?

[cyril3]

FWIW, MYOB is an Australian company but it acquired MYOB from a Canadian company. It's big in Australia for sure in the small business sector but at a demo of the latest release they said that about half of total revenue came from Overseas sales.

They also have a strong Mac version if I'm not mistaken.

The MYOB engine is fairly old and in need of upgrading. It essentially hasn't changed for a few years so maybe it would be simple to migrate to wine. It might evn run on crossover if crossover understands older calls.

Re:MYOB?

[Antarius]

As an MYOB Certified Consultant, I can tell you now that MYOB *does* sell worldwide, with offices in many major countries.

The Australian Distributors purchased the company when the US makers decided to sell up. (Interestingly, they sold the Canadian operations to Intuit (Quickbooks) this year.)

As to MYOB running under WINE. It does - very badly.

MYOB has a native Mac OSX version in the works (MYOB AccountEdge) which I offered to port to Unix and Linux for them, for free. (ie, free $$$ for them!)

I did this because I want to get out of the Windows world, and MYOB is currently the only product holding me back.

The Product development department did not get back to me. I plan to write Craig Winkler, CEO of MYOB Ltd.

The argument to date is that "there aren't any linux users to warrant the investment."

Some investment if it gets ported for free! Perhaps they still have ties back from when they used to bundle with MS Office.

Anyone interested in a native version, please email "wishlist@myob.com.au."

Perhaps a /.ing by *nix users wanting a native *nix version will also help. :)

Re:MYOB?

[IceDiver]

I'm a Canadian Small Business Owner. I have run my business using MYOB for the last several years. The lack of a Linux version is the main reason I have not converted my business to Linux.

Open Office is good enough now, and there are MSAccess-like database systems now, so the lack of a good small business accounting system has been the only thing keeping me in the Windows world.

I will be sending that e-mail as soon as I post this.

Re:MYOB?

[Antarius]

Would it be evil of me to post the email address of the guy who thinks that Linux & BSD don't warrant a port, even if it was free?

I won't, just in case...

Ooops! Damned HTML tags. How did that happen?!

chicken

[froseph]

Ahhh I read the title as "Crossover gets Chicken". I guess I know what has been on my mind for the past few days.

Re:chicken

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just speed read. Whether you know it or not.

Re:chicken

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Ah, don't worry about it, man. You know what they say:

"It smells like fish, but it tastes like chicken"

Your head is in the right place.
:-)

Like I said...

[Critical_]

Awesome support!

Thanks for the info.

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Too funny...!!! Please mod this as such!

Codeweavers and Transgaming

[derinax]

I have a question. Quicken was the last hold-out; my Windows box can truly become single-boot Linux at this point. But I have a question first.

Can Codeweavers Wine coexist with Transgaming's Wine?

Thanks for your prompt reply.
Derina X. Pinchfish

Re:Codeweavers and Transgaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it can. Transgaming's wine is "winex", as opposed to "wine". And they seem to play nice with each other in every way on my box.

Re:Codeweavers and Transgaming

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Can Codeweavers Wine coexist with Transgaming's Wine?

Yup. Works fine. I've got a couple boxes with both on them. They are happy as a clam together.

Re:Codeweavers and Transgaming

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the codeweavers bundle (office & plugin) and winex and finally straight wine. They all work fine together. Winex is running Grand Theft Auto 3. I run MS Office 2000 & ie 5.0 (never use it!) in crossover office. I use all the plugins & trillian with crossover plugin. And I run several small windows apps & games like spider solitare in straight wine (they run better in plain wine). I really prefer linux apps and really only run windows apps that aren't available for linux or are far superior to the Open Source version. Grand Theft Auto 3 actually renders better in linux, I only have a 32M TNT2 it doesn't render GTA3 very well in windows. But linux is just fine. Most of the other apps are for my family. I do use MS Office though, I've been using OpenOffice / StarOffice for years but it really doesn't compare to MS Office which runs perfect in Linux. The only thing left for me and alot of people would be turbo tax. You can't get open source tax software. The laws change too quickly and there are serious accountability issues.

Many Windows Apps are better

[Planesdragon]

I don't want to run "windows programs" stabiliy. I want to run the best software on my pc--and much of the time, that's software that only works on windows.

Face it; Linux has a piddly market penetration, so bad that it's well nigh impossible to make money supporting it all. A small company (or just a well-run, tight margins, efficient company) that only has the time to develop for one platform will choose windows; unless they're serious hardware or a custom solution, they'd be foolish not to.

By letting Linux run windows apps, Linux makes all those developers that are windows only potential allies, instead of the definite enemies that are now. If your reveune model depends on windows being on the desktop, you're not going to take kindly to efforts to replace it with something else that won't run your program. If this something else *will* run your program, as well as windows will and on the same hardware, then you've nothing to worry about.

Re:Many Windows Apps are better

[sehryan]

By letting Linux run windows apps, Linux makes all those developers that are windows only potential allies, instead of the definite enemies that are now.

I don't see how it does that. If I developed a program that was Windows-only, and someone else took the inititative to get it working in linux, I would say "Good, now I don't have to deal with that mess." If anything, I would think this would cause Windows developers to be less prone to make something that works in linux, because "someone else will port it eventually."

Re:Many Windows Apps are better

[pmz]

A small company (or just a well-run, tight margins, efficient company) that only has the time to develop for one platform will choose windows...

I really think that the "Windows only, because it is popular" arguments are pretty weak now-a-days, because cross-platform development is getting easier all the time. Sure, someone can grab at that first 80 or 90% initially, but why not also tap into that remaining customer base? This also has the nice side-effect of protecting your company from Microsoft's future (whatever that will be) by betting on Microsoft, Apple, and Linux/UNIX simultaneously.

Another added benefit of keeping several platforms in mind at one time, is that Microsoft's proprietary development tools take a proper place among everything else. For example, Visual Studio is simply a modular part of the work flow (compiler & linker only; no binary "makefiles"). This can really help when some tools need to be changed out for others without crippling the project.

Cross-platform need not be gut-wrenchingly hard, either. I work on a UNIX application that's been under development for over a decade. However, it is modular enough and uses APIs wisely enough, that a Windows version isn't out of reach. This could be true, also, of well-planned Windows applications.

I think most of the current arguments for Windows-only applications stem from either short-sightedness, arrogance, or stubbornness. Historically, this wasn't the case, but today things are just different.

Re:Many Windows Apps are better

[ostrich2]

Wow! Was anyone around when OS/2 was trying to break into the windows market (around version 3)? You could substitute "OS/2" everywhere you see "Linux" in the above post and get the gist of reams and reams of discussion on the subject. Discussion, I should point out, we're repeating almost verbaitim here.

As far as I can tell, having Windows support for OS/2 didn't help it much.

Re:Many Windows Apps are better

[Planesdragon]

As far as I can tell, having Windows support for OS/2 didn't help it much.

Of course not. OS/2 was more expensive, worked differently, and wasn't marketed as agressively.

Running windows software perfectly shouldn't be Linux's main effort--but it sure as hell will help in removing "reasons to stay with windows."

MS can easily kill Red Hat. But they can't kill Linux--that's the whole point of the GPL

Prices...

[dotgod]

Quicken 2002: $59.95

Crossover Office: $54.95

Total: $114.90

--or--

GNU Cash: $0.00

Total: FREE!

Re:Prices...

[gmhowell]

Except:

Time: Priceless

Quicken + Crossover Office
Adjusted Total: $114.90

GNU Cash
Adjusted Total: $->infinity

Re:Prices...

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like you dont know what you're talking about.

Re:Prices...

[Tony]

apt-get update
apt-get install gnucash

Easy enough for me.

Re:Prices...

[Cro Magnon]

Great, unless
1. You want 1.8 (or 1.7)
2. You're using Slackware.

It's not - not at all.

[wirefarm]

First off, apps do not make the OS! If that was true, I'd still be using Windows.
I think the beauty of this sort of thing is that it helps people cross over (pun intended.) to linux.
Not just end users, mind you, but also the companies that write software. If I was Quicken, I'd be talking to these people to help make sure that Quicken runs great on Linux. For them, it means not scrapping 10 years of development just to gain a 1% share of desktops.

If the CrossOver team can tell them 'Hey, try to avoid these system calls and this DLL and it will work way better,' They just might listen. (It's a lot better than telling them that they need to invest in a KDE development team, a Gnome/GTK development team and of course, a command-line client...) Maybe the managers and the marketing types wouldn't listen, but I bet at least a few of the developers would and code appropriately.

Of couse, I have no idea of the real issues between Windows apps and Crossover - I'm talking through my hat as usual - but I think the general gist of it is not far off.

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

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Other "critical" applications?

[Speare]

What other must-have "mission critical" applications does WINE fully support, or will support soon? Long-term Linux users sometimes avoid tasks or fileformats that are only served by certain applications. New adoptees need a transition plan that includes their favorite applications.

Here are a few I could think of, but I expect there are others.

• Macromedia Dreamweaver? Any version 2+?
• Macromedia Flash 5 Editor?
• Stock photo exporters like Hemera Photo-Objects?
• Any recent Adobe Photoshop?
• Any recent Adobe Premiere?
• Any recent Adobe AfterEffects?
• Any recent Adobe [nee Aldus] PageMaker?
• Any recent Adobe Illustrator?
• Any of the Panoramic photograph stitchers?

(I know that there's Linux programs that are almost as nice, or even in some cases better. The Windows ports and additional tools that accompany the free "PanoTools" are far superior to the available Linux/GIMP integration at this point, for example. This is about transitioning people who are lost without some familiar applications.)

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[quinto2000]

For the features most people need in PageMaker, that is to say simple layout and no need to re-use old files, I've been using Scribus for a while. It has an astonishing pace of development and is eminently usable.
In terms of panoramic photo stiching, I'm sure there's plenty of software, but I can't reccomend anything.
I've done a lot of digital video editing, and I'd say that AfterEffects isn't bad as a compositor, and Premiere is pretty damn good for video editing. Both are partially replaced by Cinerella
Dreamweaver, Flash 5, and Illustrator seem to me to be the killer apps. Most people's pirate copies of photoshop see less use than PaintShopPro. The GIMP beats PSP. I just wish the GIMP had better support for print output -- like CMYK color. Development seems to be halted, with text output broken in the development version.

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[bopbopaloobop]

Yes, if I could run dreamweaver on linux I would be most of the way to switching.

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at this site:

http://www.franksworld.net/wine/

On the right half you see "Dreamweaver 4", "Dreamweaver MX" etc.

For example, Dreamweaver 4:
http://franksworld.net/wine/modules.php?op=mod load &name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=4& page=1

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[Salsaman]

Not sure about Dreamweaver, but I have heard very good things about Quanta Gold, and it runs natively in Linux. (And no, I don't work for the Kompany !)

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[cozziewozzie]

Or you could support the GPL fork, called Quanta Plus, which also seems to be coming along nicely.

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[Hollins]

There are two critical applications for me. Quicken was one, the other is Solidworks. I seriously doubt Solidworks will ever run well in Linux, but I maintain hope.

Re:Other "critical" applications?

[Grimwiz]

Critical to me :-

Everquest

Just Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is free as long as your time is worth nothing.

Re:Just Remember

[philipsblows]

Then Windows costs several thousand dollars per year for me, the single user.

My time isn't free, but I'll spend time learning about an OS that wants to be learned, not wrestling with an OS that doesn't.

Re:Just Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows would be worth it's price in play money.

Still Waiting...

[rongage]

When we can run AutoCAD, Quickbooks Pro, and the Allen Bradley Programming tools (RSLogix), then I'll be able to dump Windows 2000 completely. Until then, I have to stay in the Windows world...

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and if Crossover fails...

[rope]

a major personal goal for me was to switch my wife's computer to Linux. But there was a simple caveat: "No Quicken, No Linux."

and if Crossover fails Jeremy can change wife ;)

In other news...

[artemis67]

Intuit has announced that QuickBooks is coming back to the Mac. This is significant for the Mac to start making inroads back into businesses, because QB is such a staple of small business accounting.

I'm not sure what changed their minds; I just remember the announcement in 1997 that QB development on the Mac was being halted (I think it was already 2 years behind the PC version at that point). This in spite of the fact that one of the first things that Steve Jobs did was to put Intuit's CEO on the board of directors at Apple.

As a Mac user, I'm grateful, but I have to wonder what took so long...

QuickBooks or Peachtree?

[martinflack]

Anyone had any success running QuickBooks or Peachtree on Crossover?

I already use Gnucash at home... what I'd love is to switch the accounting at work to a Linux box.

Re:QuickBooks or Peachtree?

[jeremy_white]

We had a beta tester report success in installing and running Peachtree but we haven't verified or tried it ourselves. He sent some impressive screen shots... (thanks, Tom!).

However, the odds are that an untested application like Peachtree will have enough bugs to not be useable in a production environment.

Of course, a great way to fix that is to buy a copy and then yell at us until we support it .

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re:QuickBooks or Peachtree?

[jsled]

I don't know if it fits the bill in your circumstance, but there are business-accounting features in CVS GnuCash, and I know the developer would love to get feedback on it as we approach 1.7.beta/1.8.

Re:QuickBooks or Peachtree?

[warmcat]

I have been using Quickbooks 6.0 on crossover for a couple of weeks, it works fine.

In fact it works almost perfectly without crossover on CVS wine, the only problem is not being able to print, the print dialog won't come up (no small problem for this kind of sw). Crossover supplies the print dialog and the whole thing hangs together excellently.

GnuCash DOES have OFX support in cvs now

[benoitg]

It's not perfect, and does need feedback, but it is there. Standard bank and credit card account are supported. Investement accounts will be when LibOFX (http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/libofx/) matures. As for bill pay, unless banks start giving TRUE OFX access at large, that is still a long way off.

Quicken is Spyware

[Pilferer]

Quicken is spyware - or something worse. There are a few DLLs that run in the background, one which contacts Intuit's site every once and a while. It's totally random, and using Ethereal, you can see that it's sending small encrypted packets. It runs all the time, not just when you are using Quicken.

There is no obvious way to disable this. There is an option hidden away in the configuration to "disable background downloading", but you cannot select it! You have to use a "secret key combo" that Intuit's tech support gives out over the phone - "SHIFT-4-CLICK" - in order to select this option.

But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.

Intuit says these DLLs are harmless programs that "keep your software up to date and bug free", but the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove, and so difficult to detect, makes me wonder what this is REALLY doing.. and I'm not being paranoid, just curious. It's my computer, not theirs!!

Because it's closed source, we'll never know what it's doing.

I have not seen much talk about this on usenet, etc. Adaware does not catch it.

Look here here for some google hits on the topic. I have not found a thread where someone else has noticed that the SHIFT-4-CLICK method is only *temporary*, and that it comes back again later behind your back..

Anyway, just wanted to rant about this. I find it disturbing that my (former) financial software has such a great need to send stuff in the background without my permission!

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[janda]

To blockquote the parent:

But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.

Don't remove the registry keys, change them to run from a drive that doesn't exist on your system, or change the extension to "c:\quickenw\foobar.dll.donotrun" or something.

You can also get something like the tiny little fireall, and block access based on PID information.

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[AnonymousDot]

Well, this is the Marimba updater . That is supposed to work like the new Microsoft Automatic Update stuff. This is one of those very good idea that turns out very bad when someone hacks in it and leave some trojans...

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[radish]

Firewalls are your friends. Chuck on something like ZA which can deny access based on a app/host/port combination and all your problems are over. I have that working now protecting me from all sorts of nasty little things just like this.

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[Keck]

You can always block the addresses being contacted at your firewall...

Not that I think it's ok for them to do it and then deny it's happening in the first place.

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[Odinson]

To be sure, just blackhole the route to the destination IP/DNS name in your intermediate NAT/Firewall type Linux box.

Hell, maybe crossover office should automaticly set up a local null route to intuit.com or wherever the evil .dll contacts on install.

You are running an IP Masq between your fake-windows box and the real world, right? Who knows what services those windows programs are running.

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[jehreg]

2 years ago, I had warned their development team that the background transmissions were going to nail them when the community found out.

They worked with us to properly address this, and their development manager (who seemed to have a clue) was very adamant in making sure that no one in the security community would explode, such as putting information screens when you installed and upgraded the program.

We really pushed hard for them to include a "Never contact the Internet, ever!" select button, and they assured us that they would do it.

At some point, they just stopped sending us status reports. I figured that the development manager just left or was canned.

<SARCASM>It's nice to see that the development team was able to keep the marketroids at bay...</SARCASM>

Too bad for them. We were doing this on a volunteer basis.

Too bad I don't use Windows

[bsharitt]

I like quiken, but the only version I have is for the Mac, and I don't have an x86 PC. I guess I'll keep using Mac-on-Linux(or booting to OS X), or one day actually buy an Intel box.

Re:Too bad I don't use Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, it's too bad that you deprive yourself.

Cleared balance in Quicken

[jaoswald]

At least in Quicken 2001 for the Mac, you can get the cleared balance by starting a reconciliation. As you check cleared items, the cleared balance is shown. Then, cancel out if you are not actually trying to reconcile to a statement.

I must admit that I enter all my transactions by hand--I don't know how screwed up things are when you try online. I avoid online because when I tried it, it seemed like the online features worked best if you depended on the online service to tell you all your transactions. Well, I am too paranoid that some fraudulent transactions will get entered as real ones, so I enter everything by hand, then check against the online statements manually.

Except for trying to reconcile to online banking, I can't really see a use for seeing a cleared balance. I tend to be conservative, and like seeing what would happen if everything cleared today. I.e. do I have even a slight chance of being overdrawn.

Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is is a matter of time to get wine working as good as crossover?

Re:Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what the crossover team has that the wine team doesn't have.

Re:Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone paying them to do the work, so they can focus on doing it instead of doing it in their spare time?

Re:Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case then it is not the men/hour that
matters because I suppose that wine must have many more developers than codeweavers.

Re:Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[bend]

It is easy to use. When I first tired to use wine I spent hours trying to write a good config file. After I discoverd crossover, I spent a few minutes, then this time it worked. I am by far no linux guru, but I can get around ok. Honestly I think the difference all in the setup script. Crossover does everything for you, and wine does not.

Re:Would Wine catch up Crossover?

[Anonymous Coward]

So should there be a setup script development team for wine? Does any wine developer know the answer?

I have one acronym that says it all...

[EdMcMan]

YAWF - Yet Another Wine Fork

ARGH!!!!!

Re:I have one acronym that says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a FORK since it is not free.

Re:I have one acronym that says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should'nt we be drunk by now? but how much wine is enough?

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awesomely bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same experience with Quicken, in different ways; it is awesomely bad.

Re:awesomely bad

[Anonymous Coward]

And by somw odd coincidence, the person who wrote that is the same person as the parent!

Automatic Bank Downloads?

[global_diffusion]

The author of the article at desktoplinux never checked to see if it worked with automatic bank downloads. Does anybody know about this? Quicken has been the only thing that has kept me dualbooting. If this feature works, that partition is going away perminently.

Re:Automatic Bank Downloads?

[Alvin_Maker]

Bank downloads worked perfectly for me when I tried them yesterday. Install had no issues. Automatic update had no issues. It works great.

You will miss out on all the abuse!

[Futurepower(R)]

But, if you use Linux, you will miss out on all the abuse!

Here's some information I put together, and updated yesterday: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.

Re:You will miss out on all the abuse!

[shepd]

Hot damn that article is good! I've always wanted a nice breakdown of Windows XP's own breakdowns that I can show to any office worker and say "Here. Read this. This is why I'm not running windows anymore."

And yes, I don't run it at work. I do run it on my laptop, but its for college and one student isn't going to change a C++ Builder course to a course on Xlib.

Very nice work indeed. But can I suggest that the section '"What is your name and address?" means "Can we invade your privacy?"' have references to ideas like Microsoft naming it passport because they think they are a country unto themselves qualified or removed? It just seems a little over the top to me.

The rest is excellent, though.

Quicken? What is Quicken?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

For those who, like me, think they don't need to know the name of every other proprietary cute software around, one can always check here what is it that these people are talking about.

Submitter of the story also is CEO of Code Weavers

[.tom.]

In such a story praising a product, it should IMHO be highlighted (or at least made clear) that the original story was submitted by the CEO of the company who makes that product.

No wonder why the post makes no references to free or open source software that may suit the more or less same needs.

In such cases, I think moderators should maybe not quote word for word the text submitted, but should put the story submitted into some perspective, and add some information.

Re:In other news... Reason Dev Was Halted

[puto]

I had a number of customers running their businesses with Quickbooks.

The long and short of it was I had a database go south on me and called Intuit and while on hold the voice mail machine announced to me that Intuit was a proud new member of the MS family.

My tech at Intuit was ecstatic cause of his options changing.

However, the acquisition was not allowed by the SEC because then MS would have had a monopoly on the personal finance software market.

The year was 1997. Maybe something to do with mac development.

Puto

Financial results?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone knows about their financial results? I think that's more important than anything else in the IT-sector these days.

Thanks for the thanks,...

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for the thanks, and thanks for the suggestion. I will make the change.

Wine runs great on FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that Wine is getting better, because it runs great on FreeBSD, so whatever capabilities Wine adds, FreeBSD gets. A fine operating system just gets better.

Thank god at last!

[Master Of Ninja]

Hey. This is amazing news for the people who needed Quicken on Linux. Hopefully I can migrate all my stuff (from MSMoney) into Quicken over to Linux now.

This should be good for people who want to use Linux, especially where the only choice is MsMoney and Quicken both on Windows (Quicken for Mac not being available in the UK, and Moneydance's dev seeming to have stalled).

OK, I know there's GnuCash, but it looks a bit intimidating, and the big notice on its homepage telling me about dependency hell really does put me off. Some people mentioned Kapital, but I haven't checked it out yet. Does anybody know if Gnucash or Kapital do seamless imports on Microsoft Money files (and not as .qifs as my files have significantly more info than that).

Blast from the past

[nagora]

So, I should fork out >$100 for two programs and I don't get ANY source code? What is this - the middle ages?

TWW

Amazing, what a hard solution to a simple problem

[thallgren]

What kind of fascist wife does that guy have? :) Why not simply buy a couple of more computers instead of all this wine'ing? ;-)

Regards, Tommy

Linux Alternates my accountant will like?

[ewanrg]

Having checked the two main Linux alternates mentioned by other commentors, it appears that there isn't a native alternate that supports the two main things "I" do with QuickBooks:
1) Online Bank Account DL from WellsFargo (though Kapital seems to be working on this)
2) Create an accountant's review copy in a format that my accountant (who isn't going to Linux any time soon) can use.

Until then, I have to agree that having some support in Linux for QuickBooks is a BIG deal, and that I'm glad that the Slashdot editors decided to make it known.

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

you are lame if that is funny... see that window and the world outside? if you can find a door, you can go out there..

Dreamweaver

[Anonymous Coward]

Dreamwever 4 works on WINE!!

check
http://franksworld.net/wine/modules.php?o p=modload &name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=4& page=1

Quickbooks

[cykes]

Quickbooks will be the turning point. We want Quickbooks.

Quicken is buggy enough as it is

[g4dget]

Even running natively under Windows XP, Quicken is full of bugs and very, very inefficient. Yes, it does lose transactions and it can't add correctly. The only thing it has going for it is that Intuit has agreements with lots of financial institutions for online banking.

One can only hope that with the adoption of open, XML-based financial transaction protocols (OFX), open source programs will finally be able to perform on-line banking as well.

Kapital and GNU Cash, unfortunately, strive hard to emulate Quicken's monolithic and buggy design and share the biggest problem with Quicken: they are written in C/C++, so you just don't know whether they contain stray pointers and mess up your data. A collection of command line programs written in some safe language, together with a simple GUI, would likely be a more extensible and more robust design.

Bingo, Quickbooks is non-negotiable

[alexhmit01]

We run our accounting on Quickbooks. Our development is done with text editors on Windows, but the apps run on PHP on Linux or OpenBSD servers. We want to give everyone their own complete environment, so we think that we're switching the office to OS X.

However, I need Quickbooks.

Quickbooks for Mac looks promising, but if it isn't feature complete, we'll keep a PC environment as well. That may just be a Quickbooks workstation on my desk, it may be VirtualPC, who knows. However, we will keep our accounting on Quickbooks.

We use Intuit's payroll service. Its over-priced, but its 3 mouse clicks to send out paychecks, that's really slick.

Alex

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Visicalc

[SgtChaireBourne]

The spreadsheet, i.e.Visicalc and its successor / ripoff Lotus, is probably the reason there are computers in every office and home office.

Games are fun and they are what keep MS-Windows around for a year or two more until more ports are made. However, as fun as they are you don't need games, but you do need to do your finances. That is if you like to live at home.

Quicken, GNUCash and others are of the same genre as Visicalc. They're not killer apps like Visicalc but they do address the modern need of managing financial data. If it comes to need vs want, needs generally win over time. So, yeah, this does pave the way for Linux on the home desktop.

Diverging Completely OT: GnuCash

[Gordy]

Diverging completely OT: For those using 1.4.x of gnucash there is a moderate learning curve going to 1.6.x. If you are thinking of skipping straight to 1.8.x (when it is out) from 1.4.x be patient and READ THE FINE (8^)) DOCUMENTATION more then once. This is because they changed the way accounts are handled for the better IMHO.

recompiling windows apps to linux

[devforce1]

Wine (or vmware) is an interim solution to ease the transition to Linux desktop. We need a great set of tools to make it easy to recompile windows applications on Linux. There are several good developers who believe in 'software libre' philosophy, but are used to MFC and windows based tools and so are contributing windows-only source code. These developers need the tools to easily recompile their apps to Linux. wxWindows, Borland Kylix and Mono are in the right direction but not there yet.

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recompiling windows apps to Linux

[devforce1]

[Sorry for the double post, I posted on the wrong thread first time]

Wine (or vmware) is only an interim solution to ease the transition to Linux desktop. We need a great set of tools to make it easy to recompile windows applications on Linux. There are several good developers who believe in 'software libre' philosophy, but are used to MFC and windows based tools and so are contributing windows-only source code. These developers need the tools to easily recompile their apps to Linux.

Once free software developers port their windows-only apps to Linux, then it will be only a matter of time before proprietary-software developers (like Quicken, Adobe etc.) start delivering Linux versions of their windows-only software.

programs written in java are already being delivered for Linux, windows and os/x in this way (e.g. Jbuilder, together control center...)

Far more effort should go into development of tools for moving away from windows-only source code. wxWindows, Borland Kylix and Mono are in the right direction but not there yet.

Run as root?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

OK, so it runs. Does it require you to run it as root? Quicken on 2000 must be run as Administrator*; try to run it as a non-privileged user and it fails. I'm a sysadmin, and had to install Quicken for the department (bitch-)secretary(-from-hell), and it flat-out refused to run as anything less than a local admin. I called Intuit (not made easier by the fact that they hide their phone number, encouraging you to use their useless website instead), and finally found a tech with a clue (about the fourth person to whom I spoke). He confirmed for me that you do, in fact, have to run it as admin, and that there's no way around it.* I had to give the secretary (also an incredible dolt, and very protective of "her" machine) local admin, which she has used to install unauthorized software, disjoin herself from the domain (woo-hoo! I only support our domain--she's fucked, particularly for backups), etc. That one poorly-designed program has opened me up to all sorts of trouble. In any case, I swore that day that I'd never use an Intuit product for any purpose, and I'd make sure others are aware of their boneheaded design. Use it at your own risk.

*I'm told there's another method to get it running as a non-privileged user, that being to specifically grant write-access to all the directories that the program uses, but I haven't been able to try it, because of the aforementioned secretary's protective attitude (don't touch my computer!), and since she has disjoined, I don't care anymore anyway.

I made the change you suggested.

[Futurepower(R)]

I made the change you suggested. You can see the new paragraphs at Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. under the section "What is your name and address?" means "Can we invade your privacy?".

Re:I made the change you suggested.

[shepd]

"In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer."

Now that's easier for your average joe to swallow, and still makes them dislike Microsoft's data gathering techniques.

Good job.

Instructions to permanently disable

[olivermoffat]

http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/2000/win/193 5.html

Re:Instructions to permanently disable

[Bob Bitchen]

This page doesn't make me feel any better about Quicken and their spyware. Why is there a different method for disabling if their is a suspected conflict with the download mgr. and
some other software or device driver?

I don't trust them, I think the folks at Quicken
willl do anything to make sure they can pay for
their expensive swedish sailing yachts and that
includes collecting and selling your financial
information.

Re:Instructions to permanently disable

[Pilferer]

As I said in my original post, this method is only temporary, despite what they say. Check back in a few weeks and Quicken will have mysteriously re-enabled "background downloading"! Why would they do that? I don't know. Perhaps it was an "accident"? A bug? Perhaps it's spyware? I don't really care - take a look at how many steps there are in that helpfile, including that "secret key combo" SHIFT-4, and ask yourself: do you trust these guys with your financial information?

If you're going to use a Linux desktop to manage your finances, you are probably best using something open source - GNUCash, Kapital, whatever. Yes, you can go out of your way to "disable" something that shouldn't be enabled in the first place, and yes, you can take the chance that there isn't *another* undocumented "background downloader", but why bother? They aren't just "downloading" in the background, they're UPLOADING. That's a no-no in my book, for any software, especially financial software.

Lastly, for those that say "just use a firewall": Quicken hooks into IEXPLORE.* when you run it, and makes an HTTP connection with it to some IP that I didn't bother looking up. Zonealarm, TPF, etc, will grant this connection because it's IEXPLORE, not Quicken.exe (or whatever). And you could block the IP, but who's to say that's the only one it uses?

My main point of all this: If you use Linux, use an open source finance program. Try it out, at least. Then you don't have to worry about any of this.

what about quickbooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about quickbooks?

bad examples

[alienw]

Your examples don't prove your point at all.

Commodore introduced the C128 that could run Aplications in C128 mode or C64 mode. Allmost no aplications were developed for C128 mode because all the C128 users could run C64 Aplications in C64 mode.

Why is it that I have heard of the C64 but never or C128? Could it be that it was not nearly as popular because it was far more expensive than the C64? Would anyone have bought that machine at all if it wasn't compatible with the C64?

IBM had OS/2 that could run Windows Aplications, and few venders bothered with writting OS/2 native aplications.

And is that what killed OS/2? Could it be that it was actually an unpopular OS that did not want to run on anything except expensive IBM hardware? Could it be that there was no demand for OS/2 native ports because hardly anyone used OS/2? Would anyone have ever used OS/2 if it couldn't run Windows apps? After all, it _still_ has a cult following.

There is little chance that Wine will ever run Windows applications as good as they run on Windows.

Which is exactly why vendors will have to make native versions once enough people switch to Linux.

There is a chance that they will run good enough to give venders an excuse not to bother creating real Linux versions of their software.

10th grade thinking at work. Companies don't determine if they should port something using the number of excuses they can come up with. They determine that by looking at statistics, numbers, and projections. When you have 0 potential users on Linux, you don't get ports. When you have 10,000 users who are using the WINE version and who want a native one, companies will make one.

You might as well argue that because Windows 95 included DOS support, everybody kept making programs for DOS and not a single win32 app was ever made. Yet it's not true. In fact, backwards compatibility is what made people switch to Win95 in the first place.

Re:bad examples

[thales]

"Why is it that I have heard of the C64 but never or C128? Could it be that it was not nearly as popular because it was far more expensive than the C64? Would anyone have bought that machine at all if it wasn't compatible with the C64? "

Hmmm... Ignorant of the C128's existance, but qualified to speak about it? The problem was it was 100% compatable with a C64. Venders openly stated they had no plans to develop C128 software because the C64 software covered the market. The C128 had a larger market share than Linux Desktops have now but the market was ignored because the less capable C64 software covered it.

"Could it be that it was actually an unpopular OS that did not want to run on anything except expensive IBM hardware? "

OS/2 ran on any x86 platform and OS/2 Boxsets outsold Windows Box sets. Windows won because of the OEM preinstalls. OS/2 was also a more popular Desktop at the Time than Linux is today.

"10th grade thinking at work. Companies don't determine if they should port something using the number of excuses they can come up with. They determine that by looking at statistics, numbers, and projections. When you have 0 potential users on Linux, you don't get ports. When you have 10,000 users who are using the WINE version and who want a native one, companies will make one."

Companies decide ports on one thing, costs vs profits. If a Windows ap runs on Linux there is ZERO cost in supporting it on Linux with the Windows Application. Companies have a limited development budget and if the Windows Aplication covers the Linux market, the money will be spent on a Mac port or another Windows Aplication, not on a Linux port.

WINE is a repeat of the mistake that Commodore and IBM made.

Re:bad examples

[Erore]

Hmmm... Ignorant of the C128's existance, but qualified to speak about it? The problem was it was 100% compatable with a C64. Venders openly stated they had no plans to develop C128 software because the C64 software covered the market. The C128 had a larger market share than Linux Desktops have now but the market was ignored because the less capable C64 software covered it.

I heard that Playstation 2 is completely compatible with Playstation 1. It will run all the Playstation 1 games.

I wonder why games are being developed for Playstation 2 at all. ;-)

Re:bad examples

[thales]

Is Sony Selling PS1s for a third of the price of a PS2? Commodore continued selling the C64 after the introduction of the C128.

Re:bad examples

[Erore]

http://www.bestbuy.com/VideoGames/Hardware.asp?m=9 37&cat=939&scat=952

Not only do they sell it, they sell it cheap. And they made improvements to it, like the LCD console version.

Anyway, I'm just funning yah. I see your point. But, I think the C128 failed because it didn't offer enough of a reason to move from the C64. This might have been because the feature set change wasn't great enough, or it might have been because the market wasn't ready for that feature set change.

Afterall, this was just before the time that Bill Gates though that a PC would never need more then 640k.

Re:bad examples

[alienw]

Actually, they're selling it for a _fourth_ of the cost of the PS2. $50 at your local supermarket.

Re:bad examples

[alienw]

OS/2 ran on any x86 platform and OS/2 Boxsets outsold Windows Box sets. Windows won because of the OEM preinstalls. OS/2 was also a more popular Desktop at the Time than Linux is today.

The first part would be correct, if you didn't omit the simple fact that you also need drivers to run an operating system. IBM only made drivers for their own hardware, and almost no other hardware had OS/2 drivers.
Sales of box sets are really irrelevant. Most people buy an OS with their computer.
Windows won because IBM totally farked up their marketing, and not because of anything else. IBM was, at that time, a disjointed company, where the computer division was competing with the OS division and other ridiculous things like that. It's a miracle they survived at all.
Besides, OS/2 is really irrelevant to the WINE argument. OS/2 could run Win16 apps better than Windows 3.1, because they used Microsoft's code (they had a cross-license agreement). Microsoft introduced Win32, and that killed the compatibility. WINE is different. First, it does not rely on M$ code, so the quality of the "emulation" is worse. That also ensures that they can freely implement any new APIs and developments, and that M$ can't choke them off by simply creating a new API.

Finally, what the hell makes you think that OS/2 would have become so popular if it didn't have Windows 3.1 support? WHO THE FUCK WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT? WHAT FOR?

One final question: who would make software for an OS with almost no user base, such as Linux on the desktop? Just a few F***ed Companies. Do you still think we don't need Wine?

Re:bad examples

[thales]

Wine is a quick fix that will screw Linux in the long run.

It will kill any chance of commerical software development for Linux, all you'll Win Aplications that may or may not have all the features availble under Windows. It's selling any long term future for short term gains.

Here's a possible fix....

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could learn a bit about Windows 2000 (and greater) and try an use the 'run as' feature.
Why Intuit doesn't let peeple know abou this is a mystery to me.
Here's what you do:
(1) Left click to select the shortcut to the quicken application.
(2) Hold down the shift key then 'right click' the shortcut. A menu item called 'run as' will now be available. Select this menu item.
(3) enter the details of the user you wish to run the app as.
(4) take away local admin rights from the user and change the machine back to how you want it.
(5)Pray that the user doesn't read slashdot/'security focus'/'the register' and doesn't know about the recently disclosed 'shatter' privilege escalation vulnerability that cannot be fixed.

Hope this helps.
PJ

Everything is MUCH stronger now.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks, but I eliminated that sentence. Everything is much stronger now.

I suggest you press "Reload" on your browser. You are apparently reading an old version in your browser cache.

Re:Everything is MUCH stronger now.

[shepd]

>I suggest you press "Reload" on your browser. You are apparently reading an old version in your browser cache.

Whoops. Yep, I didn't push reload, and the old version must have slipped my mind a little.

Your new way of wording it is a good point to focus on the passport registration, because to the average user it appears to pop up randomly, and therefore appears to be an important system message that they need to respond to. Users need to know that they should never give their personal information to any random prompt that comes up, yet M$ encourages them to do so.

Just wait until a virus comes out that simulates the Passport account creator with a little "Credit Card" box added in. :-/

Why not add the article to your slashdot journal so others can easily comment on it?

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

And Linux is the door to let you go beyond your Windoze(tm).

silly h4x0r

[complexmath]

Just disable background downloading from the appropriate menu. No need to edit the registry, hex edit files, do backflips down your stairs, or sacrifice chickens.

Seems like the best way to hacker-proof something is to make it glaringly simple.

Re:silly h4x0r

[Pilferer]

Just disable background downloading from the appropriate menu. No need to edit the registry, hex edit files, do backflips down your stairs, or sacrifice chickens.

I'm sorry. Did you read my post? The option is there, but you cannot click it! It's not greyed out - it's just unclickable! Odd. You have to know a "secret key combo" - SHIFT+4+CLICK, in order to bring up another window that confirms the choice.

And all of this is besides the point - Quicken resets your choice the next time you load it. So you'd have to do this every time you load Quicken.

You cannot, in Quicken 2001, disable background downloading, period.

Get Etheral (or a software firewall) and try it! "Disable it", come back in a week, and notice how it's not anywhere close to being disabled.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Indeed!

[Jon Howard]

You hit the nail right on the head. It's too bad I can't mod you up.

Re:Slightly OT: MS Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you eleven years old?

Perhaps you've got a broken (or unpatched) copy

[complexmath]

I've never had any problems disabling background downloading and it doesn't reset when I reload the app.