Gnucash on OSX -- how computer novice friendly?

[John Ralls]

On Feb 15, 2010, at 12:32 PM, David Bicking wrote:

> I am trying to get the treasurer for a non-profit association I am with to give Gnucash a try. Her windows computer died, so she bought "a Mac". And that is as technical an answer on what version I can get from her. She knows accounting, not computers. I believe she was using Quickbooks before her old PC died.
> 
> Since she just bought it, am I correct that she likely would have gotten a machine with an Intel processor with OSX 10.5? (I have never even seen a live Mac, so know next to nothing about them.)
> 
> It sounds like she would just need to download a DMG file.
> The wiki says
> 
>> Double-click the DMG file when it finishes downloading. Read the "Readme >OSX" document, then drag the GnuCash icon to your Applications folder. >That's it.
> 
> That "Readme OSX" sounds ominous; is there somewhere I can read what it says?  I don't have access to OSX to mount the dmg file directly.
> 
> What is the likelihood that she will have no trouble running gnucash once it is installed? I read horror stories on this mailing list, but are they a small minority of osx users?
> 
> Since we are not in the same location I wouldn't be able to directly support any osx related issues for her. (I can talk her through general usage of gnucash.) Is it worth while for me to send her the dmg file, or would I just be setting us both up for frustration and failure?
> 
> Any advice is appreciated.
> 

The Readme OSX isn't a bit ominous, and it's at http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/MacOSX/2.2.9/Readme so you can look it over yourself. Gnucash on OSX has a few quirks, and the readme documents the ones we're aware of. Some of them are just differences from the way "normal" mac apps work; others are minor issues with the way Gnucash works because of limitations of the underlying libraries.

I don't think that Gnucash is any more or less computer-novice-friendly on OSX than it is anywhere else.

Don't try to send her the .dmg itself: It's too large for most mailboxes. Send her to the Gnucash homepage (http://www.gnucash.org) where there's a nice download link in the upper right-hand corner.

Regards,
John Ralls