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Intuit Finally Offers Some Support For Linux
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:57 AM
from the double-entry-penguins dept.
from the double-entry-penguins dept.
walterbyrd sends us to the ZDNet blog, where Dan Farber & Larry Dignan write: "Intuit said Wednesday it will allow QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to operate on Linux servers. For Intuit, the move is a bit of a milestone — QuickBooks is the first of its products [to] work on open source software."
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It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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If a Linux Quickbooks client ever surfaces, prepare to wait for version parity. We just tried to switch our accountant over to the Mac version of QB 2007 from Windows 2006 and within a couple of days he had a page-long list of missing features and deal-breaking bugs. Thank the lord for Parallels.
Quicken for Mac has fewer features than Quicken for Windows, too. First, the Quicken "Home and Business" edition doesn't exist for Mac, which I can live with as I don't do "business" stuff any more (no more freelance). The real dealbreaker, though, is that the database formats between Quicken Mac and the Windows Quicken Premier are not compatible and when you try to do their conversion, your categories and such all get trashed. There's really no good reason for the databases to be incompatible.
so, ye
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Quicken 5 for DOS runs GREAT under FreeDOS (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, Quicken IS NOT Quickbooks. But for a decent, simple-to-use checkbook manager, Quicken is hard to beat. It's incredibly user-friendly, and the ancient version I have, version 5.0 for DOS, works great on FreeDOS. I use it all the time, Quicken 5 on FreeDOS on Linux via SSH in Xterm. (no kidding!)
This lets me do my books anytime, anyplace where I can get an xterm or putty loaded. (pretty much EVERYWHERE) Since it's done everything I've ever needed for my personal checking accounts, why would I use anything else?
Parent
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And at one time, it was running there (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Informative)
The company I work uses SAGE for it's accounting but we us Linux for our servers... Except for the one that runs the accounting.
This product is for medium size businesses not small business. So yea it is a big deal.
I think a Linux version of Quicken would be great Dell could sell it. A Linux version of Quickbooks would also be nice for small companies. But for Quickbooks Enterprise the server side is the logical first move. Lots of medium sized companies would like to use Linux servers but are still using Windows Desktops. Thank you SAMBA.
Parent
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Informative)
However, there is no reason why one cannot have a darned good accounting engine which could work for both small and large businesses (perhaps with alternate user interfaces). The major obstacles to such a solution have been the willingness to depend on proprietary database technologies which add a huge cost barrier to small businesses. There is no reason why this has to continue.
One of the major focuses of LedgerSMB has been the development of such an engine and the ability to have alternate user interfaces. We are not to this goal yet, but we do have an accounting solution that is likely to be of interest to the open source community and will shortly be a viable competitor to Sage 500 and MS Dynamics/Great Plains. I have actually been involved in one migration from Dynamics and am involved in one from Sage 500 at the moment.
At the same time, as we head towards 2.0, we expect to be able to make the user interface far more suitable for smaller businesses. I hope that within two years, we have a program that can compete extremely favorably with everything from Quickbooks Basic to Sage 500. That is a tall order, I know, but we have a roadmap to get there.
People who are interested in this are certainly welcome to join our community and help make this happen.
Parent
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We want someone to call when it doesn't work right. For LedgerSMB to work well there needs to be a pay for support option with a 24 hour a day support line.
FOSS is great but it is the support that you really need.
There are plenty of accounting packages around (Score:2)
There's also...
Home user: HomeBank, jGnash, GFP, Grisbi, Gnucash
Small business: phpOrganisation, Quasar, Gnucash, Turbocash, FrontAccounting, Lazy8, Bambooinvoice, GnuAccounting
Medium business: WebERP, OpenBravo, phpCOIN, LedgerSMB, CK-Ledger, OpenAccounting, smbledger
Larger business: Opentaps, Compiere
Obviously the quality and focus varies, some are more successful than others.
Can I suggest that you take a look at themed fro
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Sorry to go OT, but you reminded me - is the SAGE of today the same SAGE that had their own 68k computer running a Unixlike OS called IDRIX? A friend of mine had one....
and if so, what was it for?
No, we need the server more. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, the software is suitable to those who really want an open source solution, but once we get to 2.0... Come join our community and help make this happen.
Parent
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Just making sure this is understood
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Quickbook's market are small businesses, people like me. And they either run Windows (mostly), or Mac(in my case). There might be a market in medium sized businesses that run Linux on the backend, but I would think mos
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The big difference is between old-school Unix shops and Linux or Windows.
Even SqlServer can be respectable if you treat it like
Insightful, but probably wrong ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience is that a lot of people start out going to Linux because they think they won't have to spend money, but once they realize what is possible, they start spending it and adopt much more of a UNIX mentality.
I have said many times that Linux is the only OS that can fit an
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's the client, not the server we need (Score:5, Interesting)
So we ported one of our applications to see what the viability would be and offered a free version and a pro version for a fee. I think we maybe sold around a 100 pro copies for Linux out of 6200 downloads, but we ran into a lot of problems. Tech support was a bitch. Now things have improved, but at the time we developed for RH and SuSE, but we got emails with: "This won't work on Slackware, or Debian, or pick your version here." Trying to explain we only supported RH and SuSE only tended to make people mad. That's not to mention the amount of email we got lecturing us why everything should be "free". Now, sure we had clients that paid
The windows version had 11,000 versions and about 3500 users that upgraded to the full version. To put it mildly, the Linux market was too small to make it viable because it consumed at least as much time to answer tech support questions as it did for Windows and the user base was 35x's larger. Eventually someone did develop a small application that did about the same thing as ours for free/oss and we ceased development on linux before the company was bought out and disbanded. We had a better product, but what we found when reading what customers told us (when they did) was they'd take second rate free for Linux over paying for something of quality.
Sorry, that was just the first hand experience I had. Personally I got tired of it and bought a Mac in 2002 and have been on OSX ever sense at home and work. One of my reasonings was, "Hell I can run GIMP and my fav. *iux apss and get Microsoft Office and other commerical software." Now there are folks like you, and me (I'll spend the money if it's worth it), but those numbers in the Linux desktop market are very few and unless it's something special, aren't enough to make it a viable market for many appliactions. Again it's chicken and the egg. More people won't develop Linux until there are more desktop users. And people won't use Linux until theirs more applications for it. That was how it was 5 years ago and it's still that way.
Parent
Cross platform support (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget the Linux support, Intuit needs actual (Score:5, Informative)
I have a customer who is trying desperately to move all servers away from Windows (they currently run Sage 500), so I called up Quickbooks (the number the sales report said to call) for information as to when Linux server support would be available. They refused to answer any questions unless I had a support account. I suppose they are not interested in getting migrations to happen.
I suppose I cannot recommend such a product to my customer.
Parent
Servers matter if you have more than one client (Score:2)
Anyone who runs more than one seat of Quickbooks ought to care.
I agree that the lack of a Quickbooks client on linux matters to more people. Unfortunately linux does not have sufficient desktop marketshare to reasonably expect a company like Intuit to develop the product. If/when linux captures a meaningful share of the desktop PC market (5-10% minimum) then there is a business case Intuit management will list
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I support a small shop that uses Quickbooks. They use the Evil Redmond OS on the desktop, and that will never change. That's ok. However, the office server and the web server are both FreeBSD, and we use MySQL. It would be awesome if I could have Quickbooks use the live DB server, as the office workers can then use the invoices generated online by the shopping cart, and, conversely, the online cart can use the live price data from Quickbooks. As it stands now, the online price data must be
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, don't laugh, F/OSS fanbois have had such a tool available for decades. See touch(1) for more details.
Intuit = Dark Empire (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I'm a bit paranoid. But I work with computers and accounting. Paranoia is part of the job.
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The program works on Mac and is easy to use for me. Now I had accounting with my business degree, which helps, but it's extremely easy to use and my CPA gives me a discount for using it. In fact, I just spent the past two hours catching up on this weeks invoice
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I sold my sould to Intuit years ago with Quicken, and I've been using Turbo Tax since 1993 (still have the 5 1/4" floppies), and they've made it harder and harder to be a loyal customer. The final straw was when they EOL'd online downloads for Quicken 2003 in 2006. Previously, they blamed it on format changes, better security, etc. But bow it is just party line - replace your software every 3 years, or features you and your bank paid for get disabled.
The next day, I vowed never to pay Intuit
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They constantly tout their online storage of my personal data. Irritating ads and constantly phoning home about stuff. Crippling later releases by removing QIF file imp
More about the momentum. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm just hoping this effect builds more momentum till the day when Adobe released a 100% compatible version of Photoshop and Premiere for Linux.
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Now if they could just do Turbo Tax for Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Y'all are missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, so it's a server, not a client. Have you forgotten all lessons taught by Microsoft? While we all like to decry the weakness of monocultures, we all also like them at least on some levels. The most important one, and the one that really brought Windows success as a server platform (hint: it wasn't that it was a better server) is familiarity. Operating Windows and Windows NT has always been similar, with slight lapses here and there (like NT4 trailing Windows 95) and this is precisely how they gained a share of the server market.
Linux has until recently been the only company gaining market share in the server market, by taking a little away from Windows and a lot from Legacy UNIX(tm). But Windows has [recently] been making headway of its own. This scares (or at least bothers) me, because I want to live in a future with less Microsoft in it, not more. But anything that gives Linux more of a boost as a server inevitably increases the chances of running Linux on the [corporate] desktop as well, which has positive ramifications for everyone but Microsoft.
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No, I don't like Quickbooks, though I am partly biased because I am involved in a competing open source project, but it is nice to see momentum in this one important area.
Any FOSS Alternative to (Score:2, Insightful)
If not, why not?
No turbo tax. (Score:2)
Turbocash on Windows.
Gnucash on Linux. Mmm, also Grisbi, though it lacked double entry last time I looked and not to forget KMyMoney on KDE.
Tax return specific stuff:
http://cbbrowne.com/info/freetaxsoftware.html [cbbrowne.com]
One small step..... (Score:3, Interesting)
GnuCash (Score:4, Informative)
The learning curve was steep, not because of the app itself (though a bit) but because I didn't truly understand the basics of accounting. This is something that Quicken does a good job of preventing people from realizing.
The help docs were *fantastic*, and I learned a great deal in a short time. Now that I use GnuCash, I have a much stronger understanding of where my money goes. Couldn't be happier.
I realize that's slightly off-topic, but it seemed a good time to mention it.
The types of companies that run QB enterprise (Score:2)
I can't see these types of businesses successfully running Linux servers - hell some of them can't even run Windows or Mac OS without difficulty.
I'm glad Intuit is making the leap into Linux. As much as I hate Intuit, I applaud them for this move. Hopefully they will stick with it whe
Just The Facts, Please... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't particularly care for QB, but it is the product I have to support at my company. If I can deploy the backend on an existing Linux box, that's one less Windows server to worry about. In fact, I'm down to just one Windows server now. Currently it's a PITA to get info into and out of QB, especially in a real-time fashion. Having an standard SQL interface should improve the situation dramatically, especially for my in-house LAMP apps.
On a related note, the company/org/individual that writes a QB knock-off (think OpenOffice compared to MS Office) will make a killing. SMBs can't justify the learning curve of replacing QB. Remove that barrier, and I think many companies would consider switching. In particular, we need a web-enabled product that looks/behaves like to QB.
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You do your bit of supporting the community and see many more results like this in future.
Amen :-)
Re:A good thing...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Intuit is one of the major kill app vendors. They're one of the first companies to come up when someone wants to whine about some altOS not running some critical piece of Windows software.
Landscape designer and most of the other crap you see at CompUSA is much less relevant.
Parent
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There are many cases where Quickbooks really doesn't work well yet people are dependant on it. In particular I do not like the way they track COGS (Average Cost as opposed to FIFO, iirc FIFO is the only universally accepted method internationall
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WINE still needs lots of TLC before it will mature enough to run something that needs to run very reliably, like Quicken. Personally, I use Quicken under a Windows 2000 version running under QEMU on top of Ubuntu 7.04.
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It took this long for them to figure out how to secretly modify the hard disk boot sector under Linux?
Ah, so Intuit *are* the assholes who tried to pull that one off? I couldn't remember.
Their arrogance defies belief. I wouldn't touch software produced by those tossers with a bargepole; seriously, screwing around with someone's system, possibly damaging its integrity and very likely messing up any "non-standard" (e.g. Linux bootloader) bootsector installation is beyond the pale.
It's the computer equivalent of a cable company messing around with your house's electrical wiring in dubious ways when they'r