That is a good point. I used the test data which avoids violating church policy.
11. Ensure that priesthood leaders and clerks do
not install Church record-keeping software
on their home computers, except for training
purposes using test data, and that they do not
reverse-engineer record-keeping software
code.
It seems that the rules where somewhat more stringent between 2005 and 2009, however as of the
2009 Policies and Guidelines for Computers Used by Clerks for Church Record Keeping it is okay to install MLS on personal computers for training purposes (and I am a Ward Clerk).
From
Installing MLS (another forum post) I read that,
When MLS normally does a Send/Receive, it uses a Windows-specific communication component (Afaria). This makes MLS run only on Windows at this point, even though the rest of it is Java and so would probably run on Linux and other platforms.
However, if you are running MLS with test data (ward #108 or stake #2224445), MLS does not actually do any transmission when you select the Send/Receive option. Rather it simulates the Send/Receive and creates a couple of messages in the MLS message list. Thus the Afaria client is not actually used when you are using the test data, so that dependency is not an obstacle to running under Linux if you only want to use test data.
The installation program for MLS does install the Afaria client, so I imagine you would get some errors if you tried to run the install on a non-Windows platform, and thus the current packaging of MLS does depend on Windows.
I wasn't aware that the test data "send receive" is a simulated transmission which doesn't actually communicate with church HQ, which is good to know since newer audit forms come down via the "send receive" function and without it you are stuck with the older audit forms unless you have access to a unit's machine.
It is interesting that you don't get any errors when installing MLS on a non-Windows machine, though if I were to try again I would now pay closer attention to the terminal to ensure that there aren't any silent errors. I do wonder if Afaria (or other communications clients like UDX) is being installed and if it would work though obviously I shouldn't and won't test that since it requires actual data.
Anyway, what I had intended for the post was that MLS, at least the part which doesn't depend on the communication software like Afaria, is working better then it had before the 3.3 release.
And while I find it interesting to speculate on what implementing Linux might be like, I generally agree with WelchTC who said in
MLS=Windows!,
While I think that it is nice to find the advantages and disadvantages of different solutions, let's leave this topic for our IT department to handle. Different operating systems tend to be polarizing and debating the merits of the different OS's is outside the scope of this website.
What I personally think would be very interesting is what the original poster had in mind and that is customizing your desktop environment to reflect your needs as a member. I think the Church could provide a PPA repository with software not unlike what it provides for mobile devices like the iphone and android smart phones. I would be very interested in having applications like "Gospel Library" and especially "LDS Tools" available in the desktop environment though I understand the real advantages of these tools is having them on the go.
I haven't tried this yet, but you could try installing "LDS View" through wine and that would provide you a very robust "Gospel Library" like feature for Linux.
I think a really good question is what would you want to have on your computer to help in your church service and personal religious life that is provided on Windows and not on Linux?