Quicken working in Linux

OK, so it’s not exactly what I was thinking, but it’s actually the best of all worlds. Let me explain.

Intuit (via Quicken) is the leader of personal finance software. There’s just no disputing that statement. I spent time evaluating other solutions, and nothing even came close to Quicken. There’s a reason Intuit rules every category they’re in: they know what features customers want. (Full disclosure: I currently work for Intuit, but it has nothing to do with what I’m writing, as you’ll see this is not a review of Quicken)

Anyways, I’ve been running Quicken on Windows XP in a VMWare environment since I migrated to Ubuntu Linux. Last I had looked, Quicken 2007 (which is the version I use) was not compatible with wine (a Windows Emulator for Linux). However, I was reading a Linux magazine last night and saw that Quicken 2007 was now supported via Crossover Linux. I looked up Quicken 2007 support on the Codeweavers page this morning, and lo-and-behold someone gave it Silver rating! There were a few known issues, but everything had a workaround, so I decided to give it a try.

I first tried Wine on its own, but it was clear that wasn’t going to work. Whatever hacks (Tips & Tricks) the Codeweavers guys had figured out wasn’t going to work on Wine alone. I installed the trial of Crossover Linux and followed the convoluted instructions to get Quicken running. And it works!!  (See my updated instructions to get Quicken running here)

I don’t need Windows anymore at all! So screw you even more, Micro$oft!