After All That, Back to OS X
Sunday April 16, 2006
So I’m a little disgruntled right now. I’ve rebooted back into OS X and I’ll likely stay here for a while. As it turns out, the show-stopper for me to be able to run Linux (which I’d much prefer) on this powerbook is not anything to do with Linux itself, but rather with the commercial/proprietary software that I find myself needing to run. I need to be able to use Moneydance to do my family’s financial account management and bill paying. Moneydance runs on Java. Apparently, the only full version of Java for Linux PPC is IBM’s JRE. That’s right, Sun doesn’t provide Linux-PPC users a JRE, how nice of them. And yes, I did spend a couple of hours trying to get cacao, sablevm, and kaffe working with Moneydance and they didn’t work at all. IBM’s JRE does actually get the program started and working up to a point. It poops all over itself, however, when it tries to download online bank transaction information:
There was an error communicating with your financial institution. The details of this error are below.
A communication or parsing error occurred. This could be the result of a network problem, a proxy error, or misconfigured server.
Error Description: java.io.IOException: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: Class com.ibm.jsse2.cc configured for SSLContext not a SSLContext
Oh joy. I’ve opened a bug report with the Moneydance folks, but have not heard back from them yet.
And, of course, I can’t get any of the non-open stuff to work in Linux PPC. This includes Flash, win32 codecs (can’t play .mov, .avi, .wma), etc., etc. So, I need to figure out how to either replace Moneydance with something better that will work in Linux PPC (GNUcash maybe??) and live with the stuff that doesn’t work, or I need to figure out how to start being able to be productive and code for KDE in OS X.
Crap. Again… what the heck did I do to myself???
[Update] Oh, I almost forgot… The other really big reason I had to sound the retreat is that I kept getting kernel panics whenever I’d go to hotsync my Palm device (Treo 650). I’ve opened a bug with the ubuntu folks, and haven’t heard back on it yet. My guess would be something related to the appletouch driver, since it’s a sort-of-usb device thingey, but I’ve not had time (nor will I most probably) to look into it further. Blech!
Sorry to hear that Kaffe/Sable/Cacao didn’t work out. Apparently Moneydance is not open source, so debugging its problems seems harder than necessary :/
Otoh, if you need KDE on OS X, check out Fink.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Hi Dalibor!!
Yeah, I was very disappointed that I couldn’t use the Open Source implementations of Java to get this working. You’re right–Moneydance is not OSS either, which just adds to the problem. And yeah, I’ve been using Fink for as long as I’ve had this powerbook, but it’s problematic in that it lags (understandably so) behind released versions of packages.
Case in point, and very apropos to this discussion… After finding out I couldn’t use Moneydance in Linux, I thought I’d give gnucash a chance, since it’s supposed to be able to do OFX protocol now. However, the version available in Fink is the very-much-older version that still uses gtk1. The obvious answer to this is “well, help them get the Fink package up to date”, but that’s slightly less desirable than just being able to try the thing out. =:)
This whole experience very much reinforces the strength of OSS in a personally-felt way; and the lack of OSS here is the true failure point–not Linux. In other words, some might say that Linux is not truly a viable option for this platform (PowerPC) being that I am having to run OS X on the machine. That’s not true. Linux is quite functional on this platform. The failure point is in any non-Open-Source software (Java, Moneydance, Flash, and Windows codecs, to mention a few specifically problematic to me). You’re truly not free to choose where and how you want to run software if you have to rely on closed-source vendors. But then, I’m preaching to the choir here. =;)
Anyhow, thanks for the comment!! =:)
Hey, just to let you know, I tried out MoneyDance on my iBook G4 (just for you; I have no intention of using it myself…I use Grisbi), and I got it to work with Blackdown Java Platform 2.
I’m not going through the whole program, but it seems to work fine.
Regarding your Palm, I actually had the opposite experience. I have a Sony Clie, which runs Palm OS but won’t sync with Mac OS X without buying software. It works flawlessly with KDE PIM.
The only thing I “miss”, with my iBook running Kubuntu, is Flash, but I can’t stand Flash anyway. If I really need to see something “flashy” I can connect with Mac-On-Linux
Hmmm. Grisbi? Hadn’t heard of that one before. It doesn’t look like it does online bank account transaction retrieval like Quicken and MoneyDance. And yeah, you’re right, MoneyDance does work pretty well up until you try to do an online bank update (uses OFX protocol or something, iirc), then it fails with IBM’s JRE.
And yeah, actually, KDE PIM is absolutely the best PIM software for any platform I’ve found. And yeah, I had to break down and pay $40 for The Missing Sync too. =:(
And I REALLY miss Flash. Not being able to use websites (google video, anyone?) just kind of sucks a whole, whole lot.
Have you tried Mac-On-Linux yet? Is it actually usable? Can it share the same filesystem as Linux like vmware?