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GnuCash 1.9.0 Released
Grendel Drago writes "The GnuCash team have released GnuCash 1.9.0.
After literally years of waiting, GnuCash is now a GTK2 application. The current version is unstable, and testers are needed."
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I've been waiting for this FOREVER. Another alternative for Linux is Moneydance, a java app that apparently spoofs Windows quicken online banking on Macs (or Linux)..
It would be nice for someone to do a mini-review or comparison of the different FOSS or FOSS-friendly financial packages, because frankly, I'm ready to leave Intuit.
Oh, and speaking of which--y'all know that you can file your taxes for free, right? Or at least 70% of Americans can. Down from 100% last year, but still something.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 1.9.0 aka "We're gonna make it!", the first of several unstable 1.9.x releases of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.0.0. This release is the very first of the gtk2-based GnuCash series, and is intended for developers and adventurous testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there.
Since it is slashdotted, here are some excerpts from the site:
The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 1.9.0 aka "We're gonna make it!", the first of several unstable 1.9.x releases of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.0.0. This release is the very first of the gtk2-based GnuCash series, and is intended for developers and adventurous testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there.
What's New in GnuCash 1.9.0?
o Welcome to GnuCash 1.9.0 aka "We're gonna make it!" the first of several unstable releases of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.0.0. This release is the very first of the gtk2-based GnuCash series and is intended for developers and adventurous testers who want to help tracking down bugs.
o WARNING WARNING WARNING - Make sure you make backups of any files used in testing versions of GnuCash in the 1.9.x series. Although the developers go to great lengths to ensure that no data will be lost we cannot guarentee that your data will not be affected if for some reason GnuCash crashes in testing these releases.
o PLEASE TEST TEST AND TEST SOME MORE any and all features important to you. Then post any bugs you find to bugzilla http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Gn uCash
o If you have the urge to help beyond testing please get involved in the discussions on the GnuCash mailing lists which you will find at http://www.gnucash.org./ We especially need people to help with updating the documentation as all texts refer currently to the 1.8.x series. Please see http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.
o PS I'm not going to list the many features changed or updated in this release because obviously there is so much that has changed.
Caveats
Caveats for testers:
* Any 1.9.x version might crash unexpectedly at any point during runtime. If you test some serious work in a 1.9.x release, make sure you hit "Save" after ever non-trivial workstep.
* Keep in mind that features which are not used in everyday work might crash unexpectedly at all times. This includes but is not limited to: graphical reports, scheduled transaction editor, price editor, financial calculator, OFX/QIF/HBCI import.
* Especially all the new features might crash instantly on testing. This applies in particular to any of the budget-related features. We may always decide to disable such new features for the initial 2.0.0 release, and re-enable them in a later release.
* The documentation is completely outdated. All help texts usually only refer to the 1.8.x series; please expect all descriptions in the help texts to be totally wrong when applied to the upcoming 1.9.x series. Everyone is invited to help improve the documentation; see http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.
How can you help?
* Testing: Test it and help us discover all bugs that might show up in there. Please enter each and every bug into bugzilla at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Gn uCash
* Translating: The new release comes with plenty of new translation strings. If you consider contributing a translation, we invite you to test this release already, but please keep in mind that we are not yet in our string freeze phase. Please check http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Translation_Status for updates on this, as we recommend to wait for the string
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
It is a beta release. Odd numbered releases, like the linux kernel, are unstable in GnuCash. The poster just didn't mention that. 2.0 will be the stable release. This is nothing more than a preview/stress test of new features and the new interface.
Clearly, you're a moron.
Now, I have nothing bad to say about GnuCash. It's a good program and served me well when I used it. I only mention KMyMoney as an alternative worth considering.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
GNUCash is a *fantastic* finance tool. I use it every day to keep track of my tech consulting businesse's bank accounts, expenses, liabilities, and so on. It's absolutely great. It's so nice having tools like this that not only gives you equal (or greater) power than it's commercial alternatives, but is free (as in beer) so small and new businesses don't have to pay an arm and a leg to simply track their small business finances!
Horray!! Thank you, GNUCash team!!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"I've been using GNUCash on Linux for awhile, and have wanted to also use it on Windows, as I've found it to be better than Quicken"
Although more suited to business, you may want to check out sql-ledger. It's multi-platform capable, free as in beer, and in every way an equal to Quickbooks:
http://www.sql-ledger.org/
I have been using GNUcash 1.8.X for some time and it has never crashed. I think the point is that 1.9.X is unstable because it has been converted to GTK2, not that the whole GNUcash application is unstable. The waiting part refers to the fact that everyone has been waiting for the GTK2 conversion to happen, since previously the project has stuck with GTK1. I would suggest doing some research and using the program before making such innane comments.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
So, what's German tax information doing in there? Let's look a little further into the file where this exact same technique is repeated in another function... This is a very simple hack that loads the (new, special) German tax definition file in a German locale, or (default) loads the previous US tax file. */
A clear answer: this is a hack not really intended for general consumption. I'm guessing someone is experimenting with integrating the German data, but it isn't quite ready yet. LOCALE_SPECIFIC_TAX may be a "this is under development and will hopefully eventually work, but not now" setting. Little unused hackery and experiments live in most mainstream code, commented or #ifdefed out. It's fairly common in proprietary software because the end user has little to no chance of learning that they're there.
It looks like this little hack is present, if no enabled, in the trunk of their repository. That's not good and it should probably be removed (or marked more clearly so it doesn't accidentally ship). But it's hardly a Major Problem.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Since it's Italian, it's capice.
It's capisce, third person (singular) of the verb capire (to understand) with the imperative form in a question (capisce, lei? == do you understand?).
It's pronounced in english as ka-pee-sh, but in italian the final e is not muted, so it's pronounced like ka-pee-sh-e.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
The gtk1 libraries are soon simply not going to be distributed by distros, and with them software that depends on them. I too was fine with the UI, but we (GnuCash) would rather keep being distributed.
FWIW, I've made several comments and suggestions to the GnuCash user list and I always get a helpful response. No one treats me like an idiot, has an axe to grind or the like. Most of the time, someone named Derek is the one responding who I believe is an MIT graduate and writes very clear English. In general, I dislike the quality of most OSS software, but I like the way GnuCash is run, especially considering how few people actually contribute to it.
I can certainly relate to your experience with Quicken, although mine is with an AT&T VPN dialer. When it refused to work after an upgrade, I had to re-explain my problem over and over again, and their perspective, even after spending hours on the phone with me, was that *I* was the one doing something wrong. I've gotten better tech support by calling Microsoft, if you can believe it.
Best wishes anyway.
~Boring
I had to switch from MS Money to Quicken after I found a bug that incorrectly calculated values. I spent almost an hour trying to get through to someone at MS. When I finally did, I walked the tech through recreateing the bug on his machine. He was able to easily recreate the problem to verify that it was in fact a bug. The next time I heard from them was about three months later when they left a message on my machine saying that they found this old trouble ticket, and since I wasn't home, they were going to close it out. Not fix it mind you. Just close out the ticket.
Well, we use gtkhtml for rendering the reports, which emit html. While we used to have it setup to do "arbitrary" browsing, I'm pretty sure that's not working in 2.0. It [abritrary browsing from w/in GnuCash] is certainly not a direction the current devs are interested in going.
There was a /. article about two weeks ago about Novell listing apps to be ported or something like that and at the top was Quicken/Quickbooks, which I use and am well pissed off that I can't get it to work on Linux.
One reply suggested that GnuCash was a viable alternative to quicken. My problem with GnuCash (or really with Quickbooks) was that I couldn't export the accounts from Quickbooks into GnuCash. Well anyway, at the time of the Novell article, we had just hit our year end, so we had P&L and Balance sheets for everything.
So, perfect time to try GnuCash, just resetting everything off the Balance Sheet. Anyway, through this process I discovered that Quickbooks had 'lost' some of my previous VAT payments. Added them all up - £400 for me (don't worry I triple checked - no messing with the tax man). So GnuCash wasn't free for me - they actually paid me to use it. Cheers, GnuCash!
I miss the simple 'VAT Report' from QuickBooks - it's quite tricky in GnuCash. But if it was costing me £400 - I can handle the minor inconvenience.
I'm really looking forward to the 1.9.0 - hopefully, some more of the inconveniences will disappear and maybe the interface will be a little less GTK1.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I've been using Quicken 2004 on linux through crossover for a while now. I'm very satisfied with it. It is stable enough for me to do everything I need to do. I see little to no reason at all to use GUNCash until it is stable enough.