May be the wrong NG for me to ask - and it's probably too early in the tax season as well - but I'm curious whether anyone here has succeeded in running one of the Windows tax packages (e.g., TT, TaxCut, TaxAct) on Linux (via Wine or CrossOver Office)?
I've moved this year from Windows to Linux.
(I do have Quicken 2007 running under CrossOver Office (it works, but the slowness and repainting tend to drive me nuts.)
I suppose there's no way of knowing whether one of the 2008 tax packages will work under Wine or CrossOver, so I may end up using one of the online tax packages this year.
Rob, I'm in the same boat. In fact, tax programs - TT specifically - (and also MS Streets and Trips - their one software I do like) made me delay switching to Linux for that long. I did play with Linux on and off with an intent to switch since 1996 but never made the move until just a month ago.
I have not tried Wine on this PC yet but I don't believe there will be issues other than TT appears to be using .Net libraries for Internet access (at least, maybe for something else, too). And those are a pain to install properly under Wine. Also looks troublesome TTs access to previous years data - I'm not exactly sure how to move that over.
In any case, I did not throw away the old Win XP installation disk, I just installed it as a virtual machine using Sun's xVM VirtualBox (awesome thing, by the way, highly recommended) and I'm planning on installing everything that's stubbornly Windows under that virtual machine.
If you have more time to play with TT (or other tax software) under Wine, please come back to thins thread and post your results. I would love to see you success and learn how you did it.
Good luck!
DA
------------------------------------- Rob L> May be the wrong NG for me to ask - and it's probably too early in the
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Ditto, although Quicken is reported to "sort of" run in CrossOver Office, I don't believe TT will?
The lack of the two is why I tell people that Linux is completely useless to me, without Intuit software I have no justifiable reason to even own a computer.
You could, I believe, run Windows in a virtual machine in Linux but why bother when Vista works so nicely?
VM is the only way to go with Linux. VMware or SUN's VM work great. I only have experience WMWare products and they have run everything I have thrown at it, including Oracle database software, and heavy duty Biometrics applications from several vendors. The run under Red Hat with Windows 2003 Server. You just need a valid M$ O$ license.
For me, that's the point: My PC is M$ free, I don't have a Windows license valid for it, and so the VMWare solution isn't a way I can legitimately go. I may try running this year's tax package under Wine or under CrossOver Office (but I'd have to buy the tax package just to find out it doesn't work) - but I'm more likely just to abandon purchasing the software and rather use the TT (or other) web service. -RL
Yes, Quicken 2007 runs for me(albeit slowly, with many screen repaintings) under CrossOver Office. CrossOver rates their support for Quicken 2007 as "bronze," which as I recall means there are functions that don't work (I haven't run into them, whatever they are).
I plan to look at the OSS personal financial packages to see if any is usable given what I need to do. I looked at KMyMoney, but it doesn't handle the categorization / classification of expenses I can do in Quicken (and which I depend on). I guess I'll check out Grisbi and GnuCash... RL
Keep us posted on your results. I have client who is getting ready to purchase a Dell PC with Ubuntu. No more windows for her. She currently uses Quickbooks for her financials. We are considering GnuCash as a replacement.
We plan on starting from scratch with GnuCash at this point. I'll start with the ending trial balance from her current file and move forward from there.
Probably not entirely fair, I was comparing it with Quicken and didn't really have much of an impression. I can't say I ever actually ran the darn thing, I thought the interface was OK but since it wouldn't import I didn't mess with it any more, I dumped Linux as I always have over the last many years because of no Quicken, no TT.
NOTE: In fairness to GnuCash, MS Money and MoneyDance also failed to import Quicken data. The problem seems to be the complexity of the import with a lot of accounts and years of data.
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