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

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 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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Broken Link

[dorzak]

The first link is broken.....

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. ;)

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.

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?

[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.

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?

[mccalli]

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

Hmm...

Cheers,
Ian

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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

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.

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.

Re:That's nice.

[demaria]

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

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.

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

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

[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

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

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:Prices...

[gmhowell]

Except:

Time: Priceless

Quicken + Crossover Office
Adjusted Total: $114.90

GNU Cash
Adjusted Total: $->infinity

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.

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?

[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?

[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: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.

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[account_deleted]

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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?

[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.

Re:That's nice.

[BitHive]

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

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.

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: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.

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

[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.

Re:That's nice.

[ColaMan]

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thanks for the thanks,...

[Futurepower(R)]

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

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

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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[account_deleted]

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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.

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?".

Instructions to permanently disable

[olivermoffat]

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

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: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:Prices...

[Tony]

apt-get update
apt-get install gnucash

Easy enough for me.

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[account_deleted]

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Indeed!

[Jon Howard]

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

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

[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.