Gnucash 1.6.2 (RH7.2) user report: thumbs down

[Dan Kegel]

I experimented yet again with Gnucash. (Fourth try.)
Having learned not to try building it myself, I
installed the version that comes with Red Hat 7.2 (1.6.2).

Initially, it failed to install because g-wrap and guppi
were not installed.  Figuring out what packages to install
took some sleuthing, since the names are not obvious.
Got past that.  It does install and run now.

It doesn't like 256 color systems -- steals too many colors,
rest of screen looks really awful.

Spent two hours trying to enter in my current balances
for about ten accounts.  It was hard.  I still can't figure
out how to give a stock account an opening balance.

Tried to get my stocks to update from the net.  The doc
was confusing and inconsistant; I eventually figured out
to run the Price Editor.  It told me to run a script to
install a perl script.  I did.  CPAN installed itself,
but not very well; it kept complaining about MD5 missing
so it couldn't verify signatures.  (I *hate* having to
install from CPAN.  This is NOT something you want Grandma to
have to do.)  Finally I got that installed, but none of the
data sources worked.

Tried to enter in my 401-K accounts.  No idea how
to represent them; they're kinda stock, but I dunno what symbol
to use for 'em.  Gave up, and called them cash.

Tried to print out my balance sheet.  Had to go to mailing
list to figure out that you have to edit options to get all
accounts to show up in the report.  (This is NOT obvious;
even the existance of the options is way nonobvious.)
Set depth to 'all' and printed.  Unfortunately, the totals
for the outermost accounts were missing.  All that work,
and I can't show my wife our current balances, which is
what I started out trying to do.

Loading is Real Slow.  Even with almost no data, it takes
35 seconds to load my file on my dual CPU 650 MHz, 512 MB RAM system.
Report generation is Real Slow.  Even with almost no data,
it takes 22 seconds to generate a net worth chart.

In short:  it's too slow, and the printing is too broken, for me to use.
Fix the printing and the speed problems, and it might be usable.
Is 1.6.5 any better?

Is the language you folks used to implement gnucash slow?  This
slowness seems excessive.  

Thanks,
Dan