Your mileage is different than mine. I'm not seeing that many problems for basic personal accounting. And the folks here have been very helpful.
On 2/1/19 11:56 AM, Diane Trefethen wrote: > I am trying to decide how to proceed with my accounting software. I > have been using Quicken since DOS v2. Back then, if you encountered a > problem, you could go over to Intuit in Menlo Park and there’d always > be an engineer happy to talk with you. They also had free phone advise > for a few hours, more than enough to get a newbie up and going. At > about the same time Intuit moved their headquarters to Arizona (I > think it was AZ), they replaced their original business model which > was to provide a straightforward, user-friendly, virtually bug-free > personal bookkeeping program. They switched to the Microsoft Model > which is to “upgrade” with superfluous “features” and simultaneously > introduce lots of bugs so customers who upgraded to the “new improved > version” would be locked into an endless cycle of upgrading to get > bugs fixed AND simultaneously acquire new bugs. Ain’t greed great :( > > Then my hard drive died and I decided to replace it, sort of, with a > Raspberry Pi and take the plunge into the world of Linux. I had wanted > to learn more about Unix since the late 70s and here was a golden > opportunity to do just that. As my chits built up, I turned to the > well thought of GnuCash, only to discover that it is a mess. It’s one > thing to have a program that is DESIGNED to use specific outside > utilities, which fact is then fully and accurately documented. It is > quite another to have a program so buggy that the end user needs to go > out and FIND the right 3rd party programs to make it run well, for a > while, sort of. In short, GnuCash is about where Quicken was when > Intuit dumped it. Buggy, unfriendly, and failing at trying to be all > things to all users. > > I suggest that you Gnu folks do what Intuit did originally. Make a > simple to use, bug-free personal bookkeeping program. [Maybe the > rights to the original DOS and early Windows versions of Quicken are > now free or could be gotten inexpensively and you could build on those > platforms.] AFTER you get a program that works almost flawlessly, THEN > create modules that can either be incorporated into or dynamically > linked to the main program. Simultaneously, continue to help newbies > who want just the bookkeeping program and nothing else. What I can see > from the short time I’ve been in this group and reading the emails is > that GnuCash is basically flawed and fixing those flaws is a game of > Whack-a-Mole with each whack creating new software conflicts. When > your great idea just needs a tweak or two, you tweak. When your idea > needs fixes that look like a dog chasing its tail, you go back to the > drawing board. > > Instead of fighting with GnuCash, I think that I’ll try to figure a > way to install an old DOS version of Quicken on my Pi. Aside from > getting a program that is clean and easy to use, it’ll be fun to > re-visit the Easter Eggs. > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. -- Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM [email protected] [email protected] 253-350-0166 ------------------------------------------- GnuPG Fingerprint: 8A25 9726 D439 758D D846 E5D4 282A 5477 0385 81D8 _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
