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I also am a long-time Quicken user, frustrated with the mandatory upgrades to continue full program functionality.  Quicken is the only reason I still use Windows.  I was happily in the Linux world for several years, but didn’t like having to multi-boot or use VMs to use Quicken.

As far as I can tell, except for Microsoft Money there has never been another software product that comes close to the functionality of Quicken. For whatever reason it seems this is not an area that other developers and entrepreneurs find interesting.

This comment stream points to several alternatives I hadn’t heard of.  I’ll take a new look at those, and hope that there is one that meets my needs and runs on Linux.

Thanks Will, and to those who posted such helpful comments.

I have two PCs on a home network and am considering installing Ubuntu on the old clunker (and leaving the other on XP). If I do that, will the home network still work and will each PC still be able to see and copy each other’s files? Also, the printer hangs off the XP machine, so will the Ubuntu PC still be able to use it?

Yes, and no. The Network will work fine. I always edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to make sure the WORKGROUP matches whatever I use on the Windows side. You might have to add Samba client or server capability depending on what you want to do. You can do this through the “Add Programs” tool. You can share Linux folders using the Share folder tool in Ubuntu. But…although Linux will see the Windows folders and files just fine, Windows will not be able to read the Linux filesystem if you used ext3 or ext4 to format your drive. I have an external USB drive formatted to NTFS that I share on the Linux side – that way I can park files there if needed by Windows. All my music is on that drive, so Windows Media Player can access that over the LAN.

Ubuntu has pretty good printer setup now – you should be able to find the printer as a network printer as long as it is a Windows share.