Loan Druid

[John Wilkes]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, David Ayers wrote:

> Forgive all the questions, but I am having a little trouble
> installing 1.8.8 on my SUSE 8.2. The distribution comes with 1.8.0
> which, I am told, is very buggy.

I am running 1.8.7 on SuSE 8.2, installed with the Advanced Package
Tool (APT).  I highly recommend APT and the Synaptic user interface
for SuSE.  The combination provides a great user interface to updated
packages built for SuSE.  Synaptic tells me that the latest available
GnuCash version (built for SuSE) is still 1.8.7.

Check out http://www.usr-local-bin.org/ which has the latest GNOME
software built for SuSE Linux.  Look in the upper left corner of the
web page for a link to the APT Installation Guide.

Additionally, the APT For SUSE howto: http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/

You'll still need to use YAST to get the official SuSE stuff because
APT uses APT repositories.  APT is a wrapper around RPM and respects
the RPM database, so you can continue to use other installation front
ends.

APT and Synaptic rock on SuSE, especially for good GNOME support.

> For openers, I think I will forego Quicken billpay in favor of my
> bank web site bill-paying feature.

I don't use Quicken billpay, and my bank charges me for the privilege
so I'm still writing checks the old fashioned way - on my laser
printer!

> I also will probably start tracking my stock portfolios by posting
> from monthly statements, but I hope to get the portfolio update to
> work at some point in time.

I have the online price update feature working.  Installing
Finance::Quote was a bit of a challenge.  Along the way I discovered
that the Net::FTP package does not default to passive mode.  You can
enable it by setting the FTP_PASSIVE environment variable and/or by
having the line "passive_ftp = on" in the /root/.wgetrc file when you
run update-finance-quote.

> Good luck with your jettisoning of Quicken. I'm convinced that, with
> all the good support online for gnuscash, that we will never look
> back.

I think I've figured out everything for my own setup.  I decided to
start fresh instead of importing my Quicken data, though I may import
at some point to have access to the historical stuff.  This was a
perfect opportunity to revamp my chart of accounts (and Quicken
"categories") as you mentioned wanting to do.

Good luck!

/john
-- 
John Wilkes
john at wilkes dot com