[GNC] GnuCash preferred OS - Windows or Linux

[Ben Kamen]

On 7/25/23 9:31 PM, R Losey wrote:
> Ben, welcome!
>
Thanks!


> I have macOS, Linux (Ubuntu 22.04LTS), and Windows 10.  I love the fact that GnuCash runs on all these platforms; I have my data stored on a mirrored external drive, so all computers can see it.
>
> As an OS, I like Linux the best.
>
> However, unless one is willing to do one's own builds, you're rather stuck with the distribution's version, which falls behind over time. I think Ubuntu 22.04LTS comes with GnuCash 4.8, and it's up to 5.3. I'm always a little worried about file compatibility between major versions, so I tend to avoid running on Linux. One can use flatpack (flatpak?) to get the latest version on Linux.... or, as I wrote, you can build GnuCash. I ran into trouble doing this under a previous version of Ubuntu, and it left GnuCash in in unusable state.
>
I'm not afraid of compiling stuff (I design FPGAs and regularly have to write the Linux Kernel drivers for my FPGA device designs and then the userland software to drive it. Oy!)

but I do like to run my financial stuff in a dedicated thin install of windows in a VM on my main Linux server which I can get to from everywhere via VPN tunnel back to my server with VNC. So there is that.


> Thus, I rarely run GnuCash on Linux - it's usually WIndows or macOS.

Gotcha. And I can live with that.

>
> If you can get GnuCash running on Linux, it's nice that Linux already has perl, so one doesn't have to install a perl environment (should you care about online quotes).
I started tinkering with it on my laptop which is Mint (with a Windows VM via VBox) -- but really dug in deep with the install on the aforementioned windows VM on my network's central Linux Server.
>
>
> I gave up trying to get GnuCash to talk to various financial institutions; I enter everything manually and routinely balance my accounts. It works for me.

OK - that's good to know. A major reason I'm ticked at QB/Intuit is their mucking with the sync stuff (when they don't have to) and the choice there is, "If I'm going to manually enter transactions, then is moving to something else even worth it. The whole point is to avoid the double entry errors if possible.)

Thanks for the info though... I'm gonna keep tinkering for now.

Cheers,

  -Ben