Intuit Finally Offers Some Support For Linux

walterbyrd sends us to the ZDNet blog, where Dan Farber & Larry Dignan write: "Intuit said Wednesday it will allow QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to operate on Linux servers. For Intuit, the move is a bit of a milestone — QuickBooks is the first of its products [to] work on open source software."

Comments

It's the client, not the server we need

[Shadoglare]

How many people really care about the server back-end when it comes to something like Quickbooks? Very, very few. The fact that neither Quickbooks nor Peachtree will run under Linux is a HUGE stepping stone for anyone who wants to use it for small business purposes, and this does very little to fix that.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[BlakeReid]

If a Linux Quickbooks client ever surfaces, prepare to wait for version parity. We just tried to switch our accountant over to the Mac version of QB 2007 from Windows 2006 and within a couple of days he had a page-long list of missing features and deal-breaking bugs. Thank the lord for Parallels.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[jeiler]

Peachtree (2006) will work on Wine, but needs some tweaking: http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=603 7

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Shadoglare]

I don't know about 2006 - but I can't tell you 2007 won't work. At all. It uses a .NET backbone now, which won't run under Linux to matter what you do - I own it, and I've tried repeatedly.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[LWATCDR]

This is Quickbooks Enterprise not Quickbooks and yes it does matter.
The company I work uses SAGE for it's accounting but we us Linux for our servers... Except for the one that runs the accounting.
This product is for medium size businesses not small business. So yea it is a big deal.
I think a Linux version of Quicken would be great Dell could sell it. A Linux version of Quickbooks would also be nice for small companies. But for Quickbooks Enterprise the server side is the logical first move. Lots of medium sized companies would like to use Linux servers but are still using Windows Desktops. Thank you SAMBA.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

We, on the LedgerSMB project are working really hard at addressing this need. For the average small business owner, it is not to the point where the software is easy to install and set up, and it still requires some hand holding. But within 1-2 years, I expect we will have an open source competitor to Quickbooks and Peachtree which will handle every business well from zero to several hundred employees.

Right now, the software is suitable to those who really want an open source solution, but once we get to 2.0... Come join our community and help make this happen. :-)

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[ducomputergeek]

But how many people are going to pay for it on Linux? Sorry, but my experience has been that just about anyone running their business on Linux (that is not a hosting provider or software developer) has some kind thing against spending money on software, especially the closed source stuff.

Quickbook's market are small businesses, people like me. And they either run Windows (mostly), or Mac(in my case). There might be a market in medium sized businesses that run Linux on the backend, but I would think most of those are using some other solution provided by one of the bigger ERP/CRM/Accounting/All-in-one software houses.

There is a reason why I switched to Mac five years ago. One of them being the total lack of commerical software support for small businesses.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Shadoglare]

The only "native" equivalent software I've found so far (and I've looked extensively) is a product called MyBooks from Appgen: http://www.appgen.com/aptus/my_books_professional_ linux2.htm However, the linux version is a client/server product, meaning you have to have a server running in the background to use the program, even if it's being run on one machine. I tried out the Windows version which was decent, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to work right on my Linux box and didn't feel it was worth struggling with. In the end I gave up and decided to use GnuCash for the books and OpenOffice for inventory tracking.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

Agreed on your points. However, when you say "Sage" I am sure that is as descriptive as saying "some program made by Intuit." I assume you mean Sage 500?

However, there is no reason why one cannot have a darned good accounting engine which could work for both small and large businesses (perhaps with alternate user interfaces). The major obstacles to such a solution have been the willingness to depend on proprietary database technologies which add a huge cost barrier to small businesses. There is no reason why this has to continue.

One of the major focuses of LedgerSMB has been the development of such an engine and the ability to have alternate user interfaces. We are not to this goal yet, but we do have an accounting solution that is likely to be of interest to the open source community and will shortly be a viable competitor to Sage 500 and MS Dynamics/Great Plains. I have actually been involved in one migration from Dynamics and am involved in one from Sage 500 at the moment.

At the same time, as we head towards 2.0, we expect to be able to make the user interface far more suitable for smaller businesses. I hope that within two years, we have a program that can compete extremely favorably with everything from Quickbooks Basic to Sage 500. That is a tall order, I know, but we have a roadmap to get there.

People who are interested in this are certainly welcome to join our community and help make this happen.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[jedidiah]

This is a problem with the Windows/Linux mindset in general. They use either Windows or Linux in some attempt to avoid spending money. They think either platform will be some silver bullet that means they don't have to pay for real servers, real storage, software, competent admins. If these shops are already Windows based then nothing about their mentality is really going to change.

The big difference is between old-school Unix shops and Linux or Windows.

Even SqlServer can be respectable if you treat it like a Unix application.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Anonymous Coward]

As a one time user of Quickbooks I would rather

1) eat a Quickbooks CD ROM
2) defecate the results violently all over my keyboard
3) write a QuickBooks replacement in assembly (without wiping the keyboard)
4) burn the resulting software onto CD
5) row to the Artic in a wok and shove the CD up a polar bear's anus
6) fight and kill the polar bear armed with only my shitty keyboard
7) eat the polar bear
8) defecate the results violently into the wok
9) row home in the wok

I think you may guess my opinion of Intuit's software.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Craig Maloney]

I have a shelf of Linux software that proves you wrong. I've paid for copies of StarOffice, Applixware, WordPerfect, Crossover (back when it was just a Quicktime plug in), MoneyDance and much more. The simple truth of why I'm not spending money for StarOffice anymore is because of OpenOffice does the trick for me, so I haven't upgraded past version 6. True, Linux has a reputation for trying to do things on the cheap, but to say that nobody will spend money for a Linux solution is quite offensive to me. If a product exists, and it isn't priced at some usurious rate (like Quicken for Mac vs. Quicken for Windows), then people will pay for it. (and before someone gets on my case about Quicken vs. Quickbooks, yes I know they're two different products, but I haven't had an opportunity to price them between Mac and Windows).

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[jazzkat]

SMB's who are interested in OSS but want something that doesn't require as much hand holding should check out Quasar Accounting. http://www.linuxcanada.com/ Quasar is GPL, has Windows and Linux graphical clients, and is as easy to use as Quickbooks. It also has most of the features of QuickBooks Enterprise and can handle very sophisticated inventory controls. It's being used to keep the books on a chain of 70+ convenience stores, as well as others. http://www.linuxcanda.com/

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Bassman59]

If a Linux Quickbooks client ever surfaces, prepare to wait for version parity. We just tried to switch our accountant over to the Mac version of QB 2007 from Windows 2006 and within a couple of days he had a page-long list of missing features and deal-breaking bugs. Thank the lord for Parallels.

Quicken for Mac has fewer features than Quicken for Windows, too. First, the Quicken "Home and Business" edition doesn't exist for Mac, which I can live with as I don't do "business" stuff any more (no more freelance). The real dealbreaker, though, is that the database formats between Quicken Mac and the Windows Quicken Premier are not compatible and when you try to do their conversion, your categories and such all get trashed. There's really no good reason for the databases to be incompatible.

so, yeah, I'm doing the Parallels thing, too.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[winkydink]

The Windows version of Quicken is far superior to the Mac version; so much so that I bought Parallels for my Mac for he sole purpose of being able to run the Windows version of Quicken.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[ducomputergeek]

See, this is not the experience I had when I worked for a small software house several years ago. We seriously looked into porting some of our applications to Linux since we were small players on Windows and there was not a lot to offer in our market on Linux.

So we ported one of our applications to see what the viability would be and offered a free version and a pro version for a fee. I think we maybe sold around a 100 pro copies for Linux out of 6200 downloads, but we ran into a lot of problems. Tech support was a bitch. Now things have improved, but at the time we developed for RH and SuSE, but we got emails with: "This won't work on Slackware, or Debian, or pick your version here." Trying to explain we only supported RH and SuSE only tended to make people mad. That's not to mention the amount of email we got lecturing us why everything should be "free". Now, sure we had clients that paid

The windows version had 11,000 versions and about 3500 users that upgraded to the full version. To put it mildly, the Linux market was too small to make it viable because it consumed at least as much time to answer tech support questions as it did for Windows and the user base was 35x's larger. Eventually someone did develop a small application that did about the same thing as ours for free/oss and we ceased development on linux before the company was bought out and disbanded. We had a better product, but what we found when reading what customers told us (when they did) was they'd take second rate free for Linux over paying for something of quality.

Sorry, that was just the first hand experience I had. Personally I got tired of it and bought a Mac in 2002 and have been on OSX ever sense at home and work. One of my reasonings was, "Hell I can run GIMP and my fav. *iux apss and get Microsoft Office and other commerical software." Now there are folks like you, and me (I'll spend the money if it's worth it), but those numbers in the Linux desktop market are very few and unless it's something special, aren't enough to make it a viable market for many appliactions. Again it's chicken and the egg. More people won't develop Linux until there are more desktop users. And people won't use Linux until theirs more applications for it. That was how it was 5 years ago and it's still that way.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

Quasar is a single-vendor solution, and many of the add-ons are proprietary (including the Point of Sale). LedgerSMB is a multi-vendor solution and all official add-ons will be open source. We include a point of sale interface with support for appropriate hardware.

Just making sure this is understood :-)

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[LWATCDR]

I wish you all the best but even in a tech company like the one I work at we want to PAY for our accounting software!
We want someone to call when it doesn't work right. For LedgerSMB to work well there needs to be a pay for support option with a 24 hour a day support line.
FOSS is great but it is the support that you really need.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Deagol]

Not really.

I support a small shop that uses Quickbooks. They use the Evil Redmond OS on the desktop, and that will never change. That's ok. However, the office server and the web server are both FreeBSD, and we use MySQL. It would be awesome if I could have Quickbooks use the live DB server, as the office workers can then use the invoices generated online by the shopping cart, and, conversely, the online cart can use the live price data from Quickbooks. As it stands now, the online price data must be updated by hand via a web form, and invoices are mailed to sales personnel and entered by hand back into QB.

Maybe there is a connector for QB to use an arbitrary DB back end? I don't know for certain, as I've never actually been tasked to research the matter. Though I did a brief search and didn't find anything useful.

The truth is, most users of Quickbooks are Windows users. That's fine, I suppose. But it would be nice to tie the front end into a "real" database back end for other uses so the two areas of the business don't need to worry about the data being out of sync.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[drinkypoo]

Agreed on your points. However, when you say "Sage" I am sure that is as descriptive as saying "some program made by Intuit." I assume you mean Sage 500?

Sorry to go OT, but you reminded me - is the SAGE of today the same SAGE that had their own 68k computer running a Unixlike OS called IDRIX? A friend of mine had one....

and if so, what was it for?

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[JC97_AK3*]

A friend of mine who was a sales manager at Intuit told me that they were rewriting the next generation of their apps to run on a common cross platform base. (Currently the mac version seems to be a hacked up version of the windows version.) He did not know if cross-platform meant windows/mac or if it included linux, but if they're going to all that trouble, they'd be fools not to include the ability to run on linux. Especially since M$ has tried to kill them on multiple occasions. They recently appointed a new CIO, Lars Rabbe, who used to be CIO of Yahoo!, so he should be quite familiar with open source.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Hatta]

The fact that neither Quickbooks nor Peachtree will run under Linux is a HUGE stepping stone for anyone who wants to use it

Did you mean "stumbling block"?

We have spelling nazis and grammar nazis, does this post make me a semantics nazi?

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

Of course people want to be able to pay for support.

For midrange solutions, they also want to be able to pay for customizations, etc.

My company offers all this. We charge for everything but the software license. :-)

There is only one problem: capacity. We are still new and the demand for customization has outstripped the ability of the core team vendors to supply it in a timely fashion. This will correct itself as more consultants enter the community and we get the codebase in good shape, however.

Note that LedgerSMB is not a hobbyist project. Four of our six core members are from businesses which earn income from services offered on this project (though two of them have declined to put their service offerings on the project page because of capacity reasons). The two main players at the moment, Command Prompt, Inc, and Metatron Technology Consulting are well established in the open source community (Command Prompt has been providing services for PostgreSQL since 1996).

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Master of Transhuman]

The real problem is the crappy server edition. I have a client who has had nothing but trouble with the latest Enterprise edition. Numerous bugs and updates have pissed him off.

Plus you have to run the Server side software as ADMINISTRATOR on Windows! There is supposedly a way to let it run under a normal user account, but it's complicated.

This means that the software that most small-business CPA's and small business finance managers use is running on a totally insecure operating system in ADMINISTRATOR mode!

Might as well just post everybody's financial information on the Web...Save the hackers a little work...

Intuit is just another example of a company, like Microsoft itself, like Adobe, Symantec and numerous others, that have reached their limiting "bloat level" and are now almost unusable as products.

I really don't know why the OSS community hasn't wiped QuickBooks off the map yet. It's just a financial application and it shouldn't be that hard to come up with an OSS version that does exactly what it does.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[neonfrog]

I do. I had to get my toes wet in the Microsoft Server world exclusively because of ONE application: QuickBooks Enterprise (don't confuse this with vanilla QuickBooks, please. $50 != $XXXXX). They refused to support our having the datafile on our RAID 5, nightly backed up to tape, super reliable Novell server. Windows Only or we won't help you. I literally had to move the datafile onto a temporary Windows 2000 workstation to get support once.

That first step has led to a cascade of events and we are now retiring our Novell Server in the next few weeks permanently. Going all Microsoft. If Quickbooks had been more flexible about where the datafile could live, different server decisions would have been made over the years. We might have stuck with Novell, and even upgraded to their Linux flavor. As it was, that just opened the door for OTHER Microsoft thinking and now I have a small aramada of MS servers to replace my trusty Novell box.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

There certainly is a cultural difference. I think that if you really want to make money off the Linux market, the best way is to go open source. You can charge for everything except the software license. Heck, you can charge for the development of the next version up front (that is often better than the proprietary model for small players).

I don't think it is a matter of Linux users being cheapskates as much as what they expect to be spending money on. Every few months, I keep having to raise my rates to manage the demand.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[mackyrae]

Some versions of the Windows client works with Crossover Office. To see which: http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/gr oup/?app_parent=2317;

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[LWATCDR]

Might I suggest selling LedgerSMB?
Just some suggestions
1 Accounting in a box. You get your choice of a mini tower or a 1u server that is all configured with a year's support for X dollars.
2. A cd that includes a Linux Distro and your sofware that includes a year's of Support for X dollars.
3. A cd of just the software with a years support for X dollars.
These make a lot more sense to most SMBs.
Frankly the Idea of accounting and CMS in a box could be a great little product.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[fwarren]

I think the spam content of this is pretty big. The newer versions of Quickbooks require the .NET framework.

If I was making my software cross platform, I would not do so by moving to .NET.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[Bachus9000]

I think you may guess my opinion of Intuit's software.

It's delicious? ;)

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[rsmoody]

You sound like where I work. We handle SAGE stuff and I was telling our QB/SAGE person about this and she was like "great!". This is a big deal, it's the first step. Later maybe a client, but that's not what is most important really, it's the server side. Most of our clients however use SAGE products if they consider the Enterprise QB, but this could really start to change that with a lower cost server to run it on. And I agree completely, lots and lots of medium companies would love to use Linux as a server and keep Windows for the workstations. Hell, they can't teach a luser to use a Linux desktop! But, Windows, for sure. And, they don't ever need to know how to setup Linux, that's what WE are for! And, yes, THANK YOU SAMBA!!!!! Very good and valid points you have made!

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[yoasif]

I can't seem to find any screenshots for the POS UI... do you have any available that you can link to?

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

For LedgerSMB? I can put one in my journal soon.

The current POS is designed for retail environments only. It is intended to be used with barcode scanners, cash drawers, receipt printers, and optional pole displays.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

We actually have such server units in beta testing at the moment (locating customer pain points, etc).

As for the CD's including a linux distro and the software, there are some logistical issues we still need to work out. Fedora 7 may make this easier.

I expect to also sell CD's with the software (eventually) as installed on RedHat Enterprise, Fedora, Debian (and Ubuntu), and Windows plus a year's support.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[yoasif]

Yes, for LedgerSMB... from how you describe it, it sounds kinda like the Ofbiz POS UI. What I'm really looking for is something like TinaPOS that integrates into something besides Openbravo (which is horrifically undocumented). If TinaPOS integrated into LedgerSMB or Ofbiz, that too would be fantastic as well.

The barcode scanners aren't really necessary in every environment, but many of the (uglier) POS systems assume their usage.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

One of the members of our community is working on a POS concept similar to L'ane but which uses LedgerSMB as a back-end (and gets rid of the funky select-code-from-db-and-execute stuff that L'ane seems to do extensively). I think she calculated that something like 25% of L'ane's code was stored in the db and executed on retrieval....

One of the reasons we plan to split the POS module off in 1.4 is because there is no one-size-fits-all possible solution in this area. Restaurants, coffee shops, and retail stores have very different needs. Right now, we only support retail environments, but that is likely to change in the near future.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[LWATCDR]

Frankly the CD install would be my preferred method as a customer and my least preferred if it was my business. It will be a support nightmare. That is one of the problems with Linux what to do if somebody wants to use Teddybear Linux or some other silliness.
I would also kill the idea of Fedora for the install CD Fedora changes to often. I think CentOS is a better choice since it is based off Red Hat Enterprise and will have much longer life the Fedora 7.

I would also be tempted to offer it as a hosted service. Find a good Host and put it on-line and charge their credit cards. Just be sure that you can keep it secure and available.
If you do it well I really thing you could have a big success but My biggest suggestion is SELL IT!
Yes make it open source but sell it like it was an off the self traditional program. The people that will get value from it being open source will know it is Open Source and those that don't care will not be scared off or think it is a hobby project.
Oh and change the name it isn't sexy enough. LedgerSMB just doesn't sound as friendly as Peachtree or as high tech as SAGE. How about CashCow ;) Good I hate marketing but frankly it is important.
All the luck.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

Well the goal is to run the CD installer and get a working system with LedgerSMB. One does not need to keep up with the latest Fedora.

In my view, there are only two distros that would be ideal for this: Fedora and Debian. In both cases it is because the installer, build systems, repo management software, etc is all open source. CentOS is close but not quite there (it is not as easy to roll your own distro with CentOS).

I.e. I would want to create an installer that just installs what you need and not the whole disto. If you need other programs you can use yum or apt. Fedora 7 is a good choice for this. This does NOT mean however, that we keep up with the latest Fedora distros. This is not "including Fedora" but rather "building based on the Fedora tools."

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[LWATCDR]

I am not sure what part of CentOS isn't open source but it does use YUM client side updates management. Not only that but there was an Asterisk CD based on it that was very nice.
Maybe I am soured on Fedora because I have a Fedora box that is needs a fresh install done on it because security updates are not available for it anymore. Plus I think CentOS is a great disto that doesn't get the "buzz' it deserves.
Another suggestion from a marketing point of view is what about Mac OS/X?
Your system is web based so it should run just fine on a Mac server. I get the feeling that Mac is under severed in the accounting market. When you are small, exploiting niches that others are ignoring is a good way to build a base of users.

Re:It's the client, not the server we need

[einhverfr]

As for OS X, I have never done serious work with it. We do have a packager on the team however that is working on OS X packages. At the moment, the automated install scripts don't work properly out of the box as they assume GNU tools, but this is changing.

The source install on OS X is likely to be somewhat more problematic always than on Linux simply because most of the core developers build and test on the GNU toolchain (sed, getopt, etc). However, it is expected that OSX packages will solve this issue once and for all.

Finally!

[gEvil (beta)]

Finally, a product that allows all the F/OSS zealots to keep track of all the $0.00 software expenditures that they've racked up...

Re:Finally!

[red_dragon]

Hey, don't laugh, F/OSS fanbois have had such a tool available for decades. See touch(1) for more details.

Intuit = Dark Empire

[Anonymous Monkey]

As an accountant that knows a bit about computers I would like to say. I DON'T CARE! We use QuickBooks at work but it dose not mean we like it. QuickBooks is downloading patches and calling home as much as Windows. If you want to use it's 'advanced' features like e-mailing invoices they want you to use Intuit servers.

I know, I'm a bit paranoid. But I work with computers and accounting. Paranoia is part of the job.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[ducomputergeek]

I am not an accountant. I do design work in Video editing and production on a freelance basis. (Actually I specialize in DVD menu titles and other post production work for other small video graphers and take on projects when they get a backlog).

The program works on Mac and is easy to use for me. Now I had accounting with my business degree, which helps, but it's extremely easy to use and my CPA gives me a discount for using it. In fact, I just spent the past two hours catching up on this weeks invoices and payments a project renders.

Quickbooks is great for not so savvy users and those of us who need to spend our time earning money, not spending hours with a ledger. And the discount I get from my CPA for keeping up with Quickbooks more than pays for the software. Also, my business checking and savings accounts work with Quickbooks making it easy for me to spend less time on the books and more time doing work and getting paid.

And if you are an accountant, then you know one of the reasons why it has to update so much is all the damned changes to tax codes, etc. every time you turn around. The number of hours my CPA spends going to IRS classes and reading stacks of changes to tax code and how things can be classified, etc. is insane.

That's not to say that it doesn't have it's drawbacks. If I had employs and had to pay an extra $300 a year to use their payroll services, I might be a little more annoyed. Again, I use it because for me it's the best option. If someone develops a better mousetrap, I'll use it. Until then I'm sticking with what works.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brutha.

I sold my sould to Intuit years ago with Quicken, and I've been using Turbo Tax since 1993 (still have the 5 1/4" floppies), and they've made it harder and harder to be a loyal customer. The final straw was when they EOL'd online downloads for Quicken 2003 in 2006. Previously, they blamed it on format changes, better security, etc. But bow it is just party line - replace your software every 3 years, or features you and your bank paid for get disabled.

The next day, I vowed never to pay Intuit for their software ever again.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I agree with your assessment of Intuit. I am just a Quicken user, not Quickbooks. I was almost evangelistic ooohing and aaahing about Quicken way back in 1996. Then every release they annoyed me more and more and now I am very very antogonistic. Except for being the lesser evil than Microsoft Money, Intuit is every bit a Microsoft wannabe.

They constantly tout their online storage of my personal data. Irritating ads and constantly phoning home about stuff. Crippling later releases by removing QIF file import. Forcing upgrades because they switched their back end provider for on line bill pay.

Intuit does not seem to have a clue about their users. They are the people who constantly punch in their financial data to know their financial state. Not so rich as to have accountants to take care of it. Not so poor they would rather not know what bad financial shape they are in. Such people are not the ones who would borrow in the sub prime market and pay interest only on their mortgage or think of going negative amortization. Allowing sub prime lenders and credit card issuers to use the Quicken brand name cheapens it and it might not be worth the measely fees it generates.

I wrote to their CEO. To their credit some assistant called back, instead of throwing the letter in garbage. But still they dont seem to have a clue about how much they have fallen in the eyes of most of their users.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[Anonymous Monkey]

QuickBooks is easy for non-accountants to use, I will give you that, but your point on tax updates is a bit overstated. QuickBooks wants to update monthly at least, I don't think tax law changes that quickly.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[afidel]

Uh, yeah, tax codes DO change monthly. I worked for a mid sized accounting firm and just about every package we supported had at least quarterly updates, if not monthly (and often weekly around the new year). We were national in scope so we had to keep up with codes for all cities, states, and federal. It was a bitch keeping our Citrix servers updated and synchronized.

Re:Intuit = Dark Empire

[Anonymous Monkey]

I had not thought about a national scope. My office works with insurance auditing more than taxes. Even so, I don't make use of any of Intuits downloadable tax-tables, I don't use QuickBooks payroll service, I also have the automatic update features turned off. Still my firewall stops packets coming out of QuickBooks almost every day.

A good thing...?

[jeiler]

It's good that another major software company is working with Linux. But compared to the overall market, this is a drop in the bucket.

Re:A good thing...?

[b1ufox]

Patience fastboy, it takes drops to fill the bucket.

You do your bit of supporting the community and see many more results like this in future.

Amen :-)

Re:A good thing...?

[jedidiah]

BULL.

Intuit is one of the major kill app vendors. They're one of the first companies to come up when someone wants to whine about some altOS not running some critical piece of Windows software.

Landscape designer and most of the other crap you see at CompUSA is much less relevant.

Re:A good thing...?

[einhverfr]

Quickbooks is an interesting beast. It is something that a huge number of businesses are dependant on. Yet it is something that a huge number of businesses are dissatisfied with. Sort of like Windows. How many people complain but are unwilling to migrate off it.

There are many cases where Quickbooks really doesn't work well yet people are dependant on it. In particular I do not like the way they track COGS (Average Cost as opposed to FIFO, iirc FIFO is the only universally accepted method internationally but IANACPA). This causes problems in particular with businesses which want to pay dividends on the basis of real profits of a period, especially where products (like computer hardware) tend to suffer depreciation.

So, I guess I would agree with both the parent and the grandparent of this post :-)

Re:A good thing...?

[DogDude]

I use Quickbooks, but I hate it. At the same time, there's nothing that's as easy to use, as inexpensive, and functional. I'd love to find an alternative, but it's really the best thing out there until you can afford to spend much, much more on a financial package.

Re:A good thing...?

[einhverfr]

Join our project and start making suggestions :-)

As I say, we are not quite there yet, but we are working on it and the more input the better.

Re:A good thing...?

[DogDude]

That's the whole problem with OSS. The people who most need to use the software are generally going to be too busy to get involved in a software creation process in any way. I'm simply too busy with my business. But if your product ever gets good enough, I'll certainly consider buying it.

Re:A good thing...?

[einhverfr]

Fair enough.

From what you have said, follow it, and take another look at around 2.0

More about the momentum.

[jshriverWVU]

To me this news is more about the momentum of yet another big company hoping to support at least something on Linux. Server side, I don't think QuickBooks will matter much, a client would be more fitting. However what this shows the market is, hey maybe Linux isn't so bad, besides X, Y, Z is supporting it maybe we should.

I'm just hoping this effect builds more momentum till the day when Adobe released a 100% compatible version of Photoshop and Premiere for Linux.

Re:More about the momentum.

[rsmoody]

I agree, and for my place of employment, this could be a nice thing. We have many clients that can barely afford the license for QuickBooks period, much less a server OS to run the backend on. Thus, what happens is, it gets installed on a workstation, which is not the best of ideas. Now, we can just point them to a less expensive server with RedHat, or heck BSD if it will work, and save them some money if all they are needing is QuickBooks and a file/print server.

And at one time, it was running there

[WindBourne]

I taught there several times back in the 90's. I was told by several ppl that they had the client running on Linux. Problem was that the marketing ppl were fighting it being there (as well as on the mac). They felt that MS would treat them right and that they had to be ONLY on windows. Marketing ppl are so short-sighted.

Now if they could just do Turbo Tax for Linux

[baomike]

I know it's a dream but heh ...

Re:Now if they could just do Turbo Tax for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are using some really advanced functionality, use the web version of Turbo Tax. Works like a charm in Linux/Firefox.

No, we need the server more.

[kriebz]

Not many business people are willing to work in Linux desktops. But at a site I manage, we can't back up QB from the server becuase it runs on one of the PCs and never seems to let go of its database files. Everything else runs on a Debian server machine where we can monitor it and back it up, but QB is always a thorn in our sides.

Y'all are missing the point

[drinkypoo]

Okay, so it's a server, not a client. Have you forgotten all lessons taught by Microsoft? While we all like to decry the weakness of monocultures, we all also like them at least on some levels. The most important one, and the one that really brought Windows success as a server platform (hint: it wasn't that it was a better server) is familiarity. Operating Windows and Windows NT has always been similar, with slight lapses here and there (like NT4 trailing Windows 95) and this is precisely how they gained a share of the server market.

Linux has until recently been the only company gaining market share in the server market, by taking a little away from Windows and a lot from Legacy UNIX(tm). But Windows has [recently] been making headway of its own. This scares (or at least bothers) me, because I want to live in a future with less Microsoft in it, not more. But anything that gives Linux more of a boost as a server inevitably increases the chances of running Linux on the [corporate] desktop as well, which has positive ramifications for everyone but Microsoft.

Re:Y'all are missing the point

[einhverfr]

You are right in that it is nice to have more midrange accounting solutions that run on Linux servers as opposed to just Windows. Iirc, Sage 500 is still Windows-only, as is Dynamics. This makes Intuit a bit of an early adopter here.

No, I don't like Quickbooks, though I am partly biased because I am involved in a competing open source project, but it is nice to see momentum in this one important area.

Any FOSS Alternative to

[Anonymous Coward]

QuickBooks / Turbo Tax?

If not, why not?

Re:Any FOSS Alternative to

[MarkLewis]

I don't know about TurboTax, but we use Quasar Accounting (GPL) for a medium-complexity business, and it works very well. I like knowing that my data is sitting in a database I trust like Postgres rather than in QuickBooks backup files which we've had bad experiences with trying to move from version to version.

Their website seems to be offline this morning-- too bad.

One small step.....

[Mystery00]

However small, at least it's a step in Linux's direction, maybe it'll catch another company's eye and help them decide to support Linux. The more proprietary support Linux has the better and one day Linux will run anything you could want, which is what an OS should strive to do.

Cross platform support

[Dadoo]

I'll agree with you there, but Intuit had better start getting more serious about cross-platform support. Right now, Microsoft seems like they're all over the place, but I would bet money that, if and when they get it back together, Intuit will be their next target. Unless they've ported their software to other platforms by then, they're pretty much done for.

Re:quicken with wine

[morgan_greywolf]

Yes. Older versions of Quicken run okay if already installed (the installer doesn't work right).

WINE still needs lots of TLC before it will mature enough to run something that needs to run very reliably, like Quicken. Personally, I use Quicken under a Windows 2000 version running under QEMU on top of Ubuntu 7.04.

Forget the Linux support, Intuit needs actual

[einhverfr]

presales customer service.

I have a customer who is trying desperately to move all servers away from Windows (they currently run Sage 500), so I called up Quickbooks (the number the sales report said to call) for information as to when Linux server support would be available. They refused to answer any questions unless I had a support account. I suppose they are not interested in getting migrations to happen.

I suppose I cannot recommend such a product to my customer.

Servers matter if you have more than one client

[sjbe]

How many people really care about the server back-end when it comes to something like Quickbooks?

Anyone who runs more than one seat of Quickbooks ought to care.

I agree that the lack of a Quickbooks client on linux matters to more people. Unfortunately linux does not have sufficient desktop marketshare to reasonably expect a company like Intuit to develop the product. If/when linux captures a meaningful share of the desktop PC market (5-10% minimum) then there is a business case Intuit management will listen to. I would love to be able to set my clients up with a linux only solution for Quickbooks but all the PCs we buy already have Windows so it's kind of a moot issue from a practical standpoint. What I don't like is having to maintain a special server for Quickbooks.

Servers are another matter entirely since linux has double digit marketshare there. A linux backend is a huge first step and one I welcome. That cuts the number of servers required by potentially one and the hardware savings alone can justify it to a small business. I hope they will extend this product to the Premium and Pro versions.

server DOES matter..

[Anonymous Coward]

because eventually the client app will probably be replaced with AJAX or Flash or something anyway.

FYI

[Tteddo]

Just installed Quickbooks Pro for a client who runs a FreeBSD file server with Samba, and the new version will only allow you to have the data file on a Windows machine if it is accessed over a LAN.
Isn't that nice.

Re:Finally

[Dogtanian]

It took this long for them to figure out how to secretly modify the hard disk boot sector under Linux? Ah, so Intuit *are* the assholes who tried to pull that one off? I couldn't remember.

Their arrogance defies belief. I wouldn't touch software produced by those tossers with a bargepole; seriously, screwing around with someone's system, possibly damaging its integrity and very likely messing up any "non-standard" (e.g. Linux bootloader) bootsector installation is beyond the pale.

It's the computer equivalent of a cable company messing around with your house's electrical wiring in dubious ways when they're only supposed to be installing cable TV. Why the f*** anyone who knows enough to run Linux would want anything to do with Intuit's products is beyond me.

Insightful, but probably wrong ;-)

[einhverfr]

Ok, the title was probably a little more flamebait than intended. I generally agree that there is a mindset that you describe, but also that it tends to be short-lived in many or even most deployments (at least in terms of Linux).

My experience is that a lot of people start out going to Linux because they think they won't have to spend money, but once they realize what is possible, they start spending it and adopt much more of a UNIX mentality.

I have said many times that Linux is the only OS that can fit any budget. However, unlike Windows, the possibilities tend to be sufficiently open that budgets tend to grow to allow people to cut costs elsewhere. This means, eventually, purchasing real servers (such as Power 5/6-based servers), real storage (or building this in-house using lower-end but still real servers), and the like.

Flexibility has a financial price, but also a higher ROI.

Re:Insightful, but probably wrong ;-)

[jedidiah]

My experience has been that "Linux shops" are miserly to the point where it endangers the business. It's almost like working for a Windows shop. They get away with not paying for the Unix licenses, and get to buy the ultra-cheap PC hardware and then expect everything else can be similarly skimped on.

This leads to small budgets, lack of budgets, improper planning and resources, more organic growth of systems and systems morphing from one class of use to another.

If someone is not committed enough to "pay upfront" they may not be committed at all. Waiting for them to experience enough pain to "finally come around" may not be productive.

GnuCash

[DaveJay]

When I finally convinced my wife to let me manage the money, I moved over to GnuCash (she was using Quicken.)

The learning curve was steep, not because of the app itself (though a bit) but because I didn't truly understand the basics of accounting. This is something that Quicken does a good job of preventing people from realizing.

The help docs were *fantastic*, and I learned a great deal in a short time. Now that I use GnuCash, I have a much stronger understanding of where my money goes. Couldn't be happier.

I realize that's slightly off-topic, but it seemed a good time to mention it.

Re:Finally

[DogDude]

Their arrogance defies belief. I wouldn't touch software produced by those tossers with a bargepole; seriously, screwing around with someone's system, possibly damaging its integrity and very likely messing up any "non-standard" (e.g. Linux bootloader) bootsector installation is beyond the pale.

This is Quickbooks. The financial software that runs many companies. Many times, this is the most important software a company will buy. People don't care if Quickbooks "screws around with their systems", since in most cases, Quickbooks is the reason for the "system" in the first place.

The types of companies that run QB enterprise

[zerofoo]

don't usually have in house support people. Most companies that I have seen that run QB enterprise are small to medium businesses. They don't have full time IT staff, and the companies are not usually IT related businesses.

I can't see these types of businesses successfully running Linux servers - hell some of them can't even run Windows or Mac OS without difficulty.

I'm glad Intuit is making the leap into Linux. As much as I hate Intuit, I applaud them for this move. Hopefully they will stick with it when Joe's Landscaping company calls asking for help with their Linux server.

As good as Linux is, QB Enterprise is a steaming pile of garbage, and they will get support calls - hopefully they will be ready for them.

-ted

There are plenty of accounting packages around

[Colin Smith]

They tend to be a bit clunky for the small trader though. Good luck with ledgerSMB.

There's also...

Home user: HomeBank, jGnash, GFP, Grisbi, Gnucash
Small business: phpOrganisation, Quasar, Gnucash, Turbocash, FrontAccounting, Lazy8, Bambooinvoice, GnuAccounting
Medium business: WebERP, OpenBravo, phpCOIN, LedgerSMB, CK-Ledger, OpenAccounting, smbledger
Larger business: Opentaps, Compiere

Obviously the quality and focus varies, some are more successful than others.

Can I suggest that you take a look at themed front ends to ledgersmb. That is, a user interface which doesn't make use of general accounting terms but which uses terminology common to a particular industry.

Re:There are plenty of accounting packages around

[einhverfr]

Regarding your point about the front-end....

We are moving in two directions on this end.

First, the SQL-Ledger code we inherited mixes front-end web interface logic along with program logic. This makes it very difficult to do large-scale changes to the front-end and even more difficult than it should be to make minor cosmetic changes. To solve this problem, we are moving all the front-end code into templates. The templates can be altered using standard web editors :-) The first version using this in any capacity will be 1.3 (due out this summer).

Secondly, as components mature, the templates are going to use things like CSSP and the like. XSLT may even be supported from an XML intermediary layer. This will allow themes to be more easily written.

So, yes, your suggestion is already on the road map :-)

Re:There are plenty of accounting packages around

[Colin Smith]

Cool. One of my recent clients is a bike repair shop. They knew they needed to tick off some invoices which had been paid, but no idea what accounts receivable were in the package they were using.

Re:There are plenty of accounting packages around

[yoasif]

Openbravo is a fork of Compiere, so I'm not sure why they would appeal to different market segments. Also, Opentaps is a fork of Ofbiz, which is an Apache Foundation project. Thanks for the list though, some of those look pretty interesting.

Re:There are plenty of accounting packages around

[einhverfr]

Just one hint. LedgerSMB supports GNU Gettext po files for localization. One use for these is to change terminology to make things easier. AR can be translated to "Sales" and the like.

However, the current LedgerSMB interface is a bit clunky. It is usable and efficiently navigable, but it is not aesthetically pleasing.

No turbo tax.

[Colin Smith]

Free Quickbooks alternatives:

Turbocash on Windows.
Gnucash on Linux. Mmm, also Grisbi, though it lacked double entry last time I looked and not to forget KMyMoney on KDE.

Tax return specific stuff:
http://cbbrowne.com/info/freetaxsoftware.html

Re:No turbo tax.

[DogDude]

Gnucash on Linux.

As an alternative to Quickbooks? That's like saying that MS Photo Viewer is a replacement for Photoshop. Gnucash is about 10-15 years behind Intuit in terms of functionality.

Quicken 5 for DOS runs GREAT under FreeDOS

[mcrbids]

For Intuit, the move is a bit of a milestone -- QuickBooks is the first of its products [to] work on open source software."

Ok, Quicken IS NOT Quickbooks. But for a decent, simple-to-use checkbook manager, Quicken is hard to beat. It's incredibly user-friendly, and the ancient version I have, version 5.0 for DOS, works great on FreeDOS. I use it all the time, Quicken 5 on FreeDOS on Linux via SSH in Xterm. (no kidding!)

This lets me do my books anytime, anyplace where I can get an xterm or putty loaded. (pretty much EVERYWHERE) Since it's done everything I've ever needed for my personal checking accounts, why would I use anything else?

Open Source means no going out-of-business

[DragonHawk]

It's worth pointing out that anything which is released under the GPL alleviates a lot of the concerns that single-vendor solutions incur. Any truly Free/Open Source Software is never going to go out-of-business or be killed. Someone else can always fork the code.

I'm not criticizing LedgerSMB (indeed, I'll be keeping an eye on it). And I appreciate that Quasar has some closed, non-Free parts. I just wanted to point out this advantage of FOSS.

Re:Open Source means no going out-of-business

[einhverfr]

It's worth pointing out that anything which is released under the GPL alleviates a lot of the concerns that single-vendor solutions incur. Any truly Free/Open Source Software is never going to go out-of-business or be killed. Someone else can always fork the code.

I'm not criticizing LedgerSMB (indeed, I'll be keeping an eye on it). And I appreciate that Quasar has some closed, non-Free parts. I just wanted to point out this advantage of FOSS. It would be really hard to take what you say as criticism of LedgerSMB anyways because it doesn't apply :-).

We are multi-vendor, the core application is GPL, and we only rely on FOSS components.

Just The Facts, Please...

[stan_freedom]

I saw the article yesterday and contacted QB.

• The impacted product is Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions, which is the top-tier QB product. This is the next step above Quickbooks and Quickbooks Pro.
  
• The cost for 5 users is $3,000, 10 users $4,500, 20 users $7,500.
  
• This version uses the Sybase iAnywhere SQL-compliant database as the back end. There is no additional charge for the DB.
  
• The only components that run on Linux are the DB and a daemon that apparently manages connections.
  
• According to QB support, the linux components won't be available until June 25th, and will be free to download.
  
• The linux documentation says is only tested (and thus supported) on Fedora FC6 and OpenSuse 10.2.
  
• While not confirmed, it appears that the DB can be accessed via ODBC or possibly even FreeTDS, so that other applications can see the QB data.
  
• This does not work with the Terminal Services version of Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions. It only works when the fat client is installed on the user's desktop.
  
• SAMBA must be enabled and mapped to the client PCs.
  
• A thirty-day trial version of QB Enterprise Solutions can be obtained by calling the number at this site, although I haven't confirmed it will work with Linux. I called yesterday afternoon, and received a tracking number this morning. We are a paying customer, so your mileage may vary.
  

I don't particularly care for QB, but it is the product I have to support at my company. If I can deploy the backend on an existing Linux box, that's one less Windows server to worry about. In fact, I'm down to just one Windows server now. Currently it's a PITA to get info into and out of QB, especially in a real-time fashion. Having an standard SQL interface should improve the situation dramatically, especially for my in-house LAMP apps.

On a related note, the company/org/individual that writes a QB knock-off (think OpenOffice compared to MS Office) will make a killing. SMBs can't justify the learning curve of replacing QB. Remove that barrier, and I think many companies would consider switching. In particular, we need a web-enabled product that looks/behaves like to QB.