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PAF on Linux (or alternatives)

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 12:56 am
by jp78
Let's get the ball rolling!

What are people using for genealogy on Linux?

Geneology on Linux

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:05 am
by Cyberjunkie-p40
The most used geneology program on Linux is Lifelines ( http://lifelines.sourceforge.net). It uses gedcom files for it's database, and you can write script for custom reports.

The next biggest application is GRAMPS ( http://gramps-project.org ).

There may be some others, but these are the two that I have found.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 5:53 am
by WelchTC
I've used GRAMPS quite a bit and rather like it. I have only 2 complaints about it:

1. If you attach an image to a record (say a census record or photograph) it saves the full path to the image instead of the relative path. Then if you move the database to another machine, all of the images fail to load.

2. The reports it creates don't look that great. The good news is that most of the reports can be output to OpenOffice documents so that you can change them.

Tom

FamilySearch Desktop Project

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 2:03 pm
by ClarkeGJ
It is The Church's intent to create an Open Source project for a desktop genealogy record manager that is compatible with the New FamilySearch. We are now looking for a Lead Engineer on this project. If we do are work right, this should easily be portable to the Linux world.

Gordon Clarke
FamilySearch DevNet Manager

Don't forget Mac users

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:10 pm
by jkarras-p40
gordon wrote:It is The Church's intent to create an Open Source project for a desktop genealogy record manager that is compatible with the New FamilySearch. We are now looking for a Lead Engineer on this project. If we do are work right, this should easily be portable to the Linux world.

Gordon Clarke
FamilySearch DevNet Manager
Thats great when doing it don't forget the Mac audience. I know of a few people that are looking to use parallel's (or similar tech) and Windows to run PAF because the new Intel macs don't support Classic mode anymore. Java would be an ok idea with me if you did native style installs. Eg. package windows in an installer and mac in a bundle...

Jonathan

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:25 pm
by russellhltn
Just to add what Gordon has said. PAF was a concept rooted in the pre-Internet days of when one stored one's information on the local hard drive (or even floppy!). But Genealogy is a collaborative effort. Individually, locally stored databases are a really poor data model for a collaborative work. The Church is working on a new FamilySearch site that will take things to the next level.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:14 pm
by clarkkent93-p40
jkarras wrote:Thats great when doing it don't forget the Mac audience. I know of a few people that are looking to use parallel's (or similar tech) and Windows to run PAF because the new Intel macs don't support Classic mode anymore. Java would be an ok idea with me if you did native style installs. Eg. package windows in an installer and mac in a bundle...

Jonathan
Is there even decent genealogy software for the Mac?

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:29 am
by shoalcreek5
Sure there is. See http://www.macgenealogy.org/

Reunion

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:28 pm
by cmkilger
clarkkent93 wrote:Is there even decent genealogy software for the Mac?
I really like Reunion 8. http://www.leisterpro.com

Does anyone know if PAF will run under wine?

Cory

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:30 am
by gthornock-p40
cmkilger wrote:IDoes anyone know if PAF will run under wine?
I've seen instructions for getting it to work, but I've never done it myself. As I recall, there were some DLLs that Wine didn't provide, or that the Wine versions didn't work, that had to be copied in from a real Windows installation.