Financial Services Software for Linux?

Shakrai asks: "I find myself in the process of building a new computer system and at a crossroads for what OS to put on it. I have used Linux for years as a server for my home network and as a workstation dual booting with Windows. I have find myself unable to get away from Windows entirely because of the large amount of older games that I retain and still like to play. Nevertheless I am less then eager to pony up $80-$200 for a Windows license for my new box and I figure that I can learn to live without most of the Windows games that I enjoy. There still seems to be one stumbling block before I could totally abandon Windows though: Financial Services Software. For the last six years I have been quite the avid user of Quicken. Every single investment and transaction that I have ever made resides in Quicken. Is there a package for Linux out there that even remotely provides the same functionality?" "I don't really use Quicken's online services (why pay for something my credit union gives me for free) but I pretty much use every other function of the product (tax estimation, investment tracking, reports, etc). Is this going to keep me stuck in Windows land? Short of writing my own replacement for Quicken (not very likely) what are my options?"

Comments

Get a Mac

[MBCook]

Get a Mac.

Not what you were looking for, but consider it. You can run open source software on it, you can even run Linux on it. Most of the big games get ported eventually. Best of all, it has Quicken (which I use myself) and other big name software (including an excellent version of Office). You won't have to re-enter all your data (as another poster talked about), you can just import it.

Seriously, give it a try for a while. It's too bad Apple removed that 30 day free trial of a Mac Mini.

Not willing to go Mac? Can you run Quicken (maybe an older version) well in Wine? What about running VMWare or Bochs and running it inside Windows in there? You don't need the performance so it should be quite useable.

Re:One thing to consider...

[Shakrai]

If you actually don't like the alternative, and decide to go back to Quicken, then you get to re-enter all the data.

I'd have to run them in parallel for awhile until I was happy with the Linux replacement or decided to keep Quicken. I did this when I test-drove Microsoft Money for a few weeks -- kept updating my Quicken file alongside the Money one. I eventually gave up on Money though -- nicer interface but it wasn't as powerful.

I had thought Wine was pretty far along on supporting Quicken. If you already paid for the Quicken License, are pretty much happy with it, and WINE supports it, why bother switching?

That's an idea. Though that might be hit or miss. I suppose I'd have to try it to see how well it works. I'm not totally tied to Quicken though -- I guess I posed the question because I wanted to see if there was decent financial software out there for Linux and what people thought of it.