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Crossover 4.2 Runs Quickbooks on Linux
Memorize writes "What's keeping you from switching your desktop to Linux? Linux has been able to run MS Office under Wine for a while now, but Codeweavers just announced Crossover 4.2 with support for Intuit Quicken and Quickbooks. I know that lack of a good bookkeeping app (other than Gnucash) has been keeping a lot of people from switching. It supports iTunes, too. What else do you need?"
And it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux natively. None of this WINE nonsense. Clicky.
Not affiliated with them by any means, just a happy customer. I'm planning on eliminating AccPAC and MiSYS at my office for their Appgen Custom Suite since it too is multiplatform, modular and you can get a developer license without the hassles that AccPAC has.
Is the hassle or the fear. But remember that Win32 is just a "flavor" of the NT kernel. Is it possible to make a Win32 "flavor" of the Linux kernel? I guess alot of the code from codeweaver does this kinda. Then it would be easier to port 3rd party Windows apps to Linux and maybe verders would do it. Yes, I know Wine would still be necessary for MS Office. The toughest part would be the GUI interfaces. Then put all of this together into a both a real and CD distro so people can try it out. Then maybe we can get some switchage happening...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
For business accounting on Linux there is Quasar, which is a "full function, stand-alone business accounting package." It has both a GPL and commercial licenses.
I'll second that - been using it on Mac OS X for a good few months now and I'm very happy with it. Sean and the dev team are very helpful - you can mail them via support, or bring something up in the mailing list, and you'll get a direct response: bit of a difference to Quicken's attitude! (They've completely withdrawn from the UK.) It's targeted at personal finance management and not really suitable for business accounts, though, for that I'd suggest GNUCash (via Fink if you're on OS X - compile from source, don't use the binary as it's old and somewhat buggy. Yes, the dependencies are huge unfortunately!)
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There are some good finance apps for Linux as far as I'm aware, check out this (dated) review:
http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=8217/ur0305
MSMoney and Quicken are popular for a reason, though: they're actually fairly good, so don't be surprised if some of the features you're accustomed to don't behave the same or even aren't there at all. (For instance, MoneyDance doesn't do the equivalent of Quicken's Classes yet, though it will do very soon as it's near the top of the feature requests list.) Still, I think it's worth the short-term pain of switching to know that your software won't suddenly magically "expire", and that you're not locked into a platform because your accounts software only works on Windows. (Speaking of which, I'd *love* to see someone overcome GNUCash's evil dependencies and port it to Windows, it'd massively increase it's uptake & increase people's exposure to alternatives to the Big 2.)
GNUCashToQIF may come in handy for some (such as those testing out MoneyDance):
http://gnucashtoqif.sourceforge.net/
And there's a pretty comprehensive thread on Mac finance apps here:
http://www.timandkathy.co.uk/journal/2005/02/05/l
As well as a decent comparative review of Mac apps here (with a good overview of MoneyDance, so as to not be too off-topic!):
http://www.theappleblog.com/2005/03/19/moneydance
GnuCash is free, but does not run on MS Windows. It also uses the more-complex double entry system bookkeepers use. This may be ok for you though.
The problem with Quicken (and perhaps Quickbooks) is Quicken charges a "tax" on banks for each transaction (check) written in Quicken and uploaded to the bank. They also discontinued support for the open QIF exchange format most banks use.