13 replies to this topic

[Veteran]

When will RM be ported to Linux?  

Our family dropped Windows and upgraded all our PCs to Linux two years ago.  (It was a good decision and we have not run an anti-virus scan since.)  We are now interested in RM to synchronize with new.familysearch.  We could run RM under WINE but there is no guarantee new versions of RM will work as it seems they are only tested with Windows and not WINE.

Is there any hope?

[kbens0n]

Veteran, on 16 February 2009 - 07:03 AM, said:

When will RM be ported to Linux?  

Our family dropped Windows and upgraded all our PCs to Linux two years ago.  (It was a good decision and we have not run an anti-virus scan since.)  We are now interested in RM to synchronize with new.familysearch.  We could run RM under WINE but there is no guarantee new versions of RM will work as it seems they are only tested with Windows and not WINE.

Is there any hope?

Poor Linux still suffers from having such a tiny market share, which just hasn't warranted coverage (other than via Windows emulation).
From Wikipedia:"Estimates for the desktop market share of Linux range from less than one percent to almost two percent. In comparison, Microsoft operating systems hold more than 90%."

[Don Newcomb]

Are you sure it won't run just as it is? WINE is no longer Beta and is included in some distros. I think I loaded RM on Linux just to see how it works. Let me double check that.

[Don Newcomb]

Just for fun, I installed RM 3.2.6 on my Linux (Ubuntu 8.4) box. Everything seems to work just fine. It installed, upgraded, took the registration key and restored from a backup file.  I didn't test every possible function but what I tested seemed to work. I'm running WINE 1.1.14.

For those who are not familiar with WINE, it is a compatibility package for running 32-bit Windows programs under Linux on a 32-bit Intel box (i.e. PC). For information about WINE see the WINE homepage.

[Clay]

I have been running Roots Magic for years on Linux. There is no need to port something which already works.
All you need to do is install Crossover for Linux. The URL follows for Crossover. Crossover's cost is $39. You can also use Wine which is pre-installed in many distributions. Wine is FREE but harder to use.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

I have been using  RootsMagic 2.0 for years on Linux and just installed Version 4.0 which works flawlessly for Linux. I have run Roots Magic under Crossover on the following Linux distributions:

CentOS 5.X (or Red Hat Enterprise 5.X)
Suse Linux 10.3 , 11.0 and 11.1
Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
Kubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
Mempis All versions
PCLinux all versions
Fedora 8 and 9

Crossover does have some problems installing using KDE 4.2. I had problems installing Crossover on Kubuntu 9.04 and had to play around to get it installed correctly. Once installed Roots Magic 4.0 works flawlessly.

The nice part of Crossover is that all you have to do is install the Windows or Roots Magic software once. You can then save it to a "Bottle". Once in a bottle you can reinstall it on a later version of Linux at any time. For example I installed Windows Office 2003, Internet Explorer etc. using crossover years ago. I have been reloading the same bottles on different Linux Systems for years. The same thing goes with RootsMagic. When you re-install from a "bottle" on another Linux system all your genealogy data is also reinstalled. A "bottle" is just a large binary file.

If you do not wish to use Crossover just install Sun's Virtual Box. It's FREE to download.

http://www.sun.com/software/products/virtualbox/get.jsp

Virtual Box allows you to install Windows to run on Linux. It is easy to use and you can install XP or Vista to run on Linux. Then install RootsMagic to run under Windows on the Sun Virtual Box. VMware runs the same way but is NOT FREE.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

Sorry for the long append. I hope this helps someone.

Clay

[Cedric]

Clay, on 27 April 2009 - 11:42 AM, said:

I have been running Roots Magic for years on Linux. There is no need to port something which already works.
All you need to do is install Crossover for Linux. The URL follows for Crossover. Crossover's cost is $39. You can also use Wine which is pre-installed in many distributions. Wine is FREE but harder to use.

<a href="http://www.codeweave...ducts/cxlinux/" target="_blank">http://www.codeweave...ts/cxlinux/</a>

I have been using  RootsMagic 2.0 for years on Linux and just installed Version 4.0 which works flawlessly for Linux. I have run Roots Magic under Crossover on the following Linux distributions:

CentOS 5.X (or Red Hat Enterprise 5.X)
Suse Linux 10.3 , 11.0 and 11.1
Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
Kubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04
Mempis All versions
PCLinux all versions
Fedora 8 and 9

Crossover does have some problems installing using KDE 4.2. I had problems installing Crossover on Kubuntu 9.04 and had to play around to get it installed correctly. Once installed Roots Magic 4.0 works flawlessly.

The nice part of Crossover is that all you have to do is install the Windows or Roots Magic software once. You can then save it to a "Bottle". Once in a bottle you can reinstall it on a later version of Linux at any time. For example I installed Windows Office 2003, Internet Explorer etc. using crossover years ago. I have been reloading the same bottles on different Linux Systems for years. The same thing goes with RootsMagic. When you re-install from a "bottle" on another Linux system all your genealogy data is also reinstalled. A "bottle" is just a large binary file.

If you do not wish to use Crossover just install Sun's Virtual Box. It's FREE to download.

<a href="http://www.sun.com/s...ualbox/get.jsp" target="_blank">http://www.sun.com/s...box/get.jsp</a>

Virtual Box allows you to install Windows to run on Linux. It is easy to use and you can install XP or Vista to run on Linux. Then install RootsMagic to run under Windows on the Sun Virtual Box. VMware runs the same way but is NOT FREE.

<a href="http://www.vmware.co...m/products/ws/" target="_blank">http://www.vmware.co...roducts/ws/</a>

Sorry for the long append. I hope this helps someone.

Clay

[lostinbrave]

The biggest reason I don't run it on linux is the lack of being able to use New FamilySearch. It is a common problem with connecting to the internet, but can be fixed and many programs run great using, namely Utorrent.

If Bruce and the team work the little bit to get that working many people would greatly appreciate it, I hate having to boot up in to windows to run RM.

[Cedric]

As a Linux novice I am testing it to see if I can switch from XP.
I installed Ubuntu 9.04, then crossover Linux trail, added fonts and then RM 4 (I have v4.404 on XP but haven't yet put that into Linux).  I find my database opens, but quite a few things are not as they should be - I am guessing I need to load some more Windows software into crossover.  The initial problems might be display related.
1) on the toolbar at the top, the shape of the icons is there, but they have no colours, so it is hard to work out which is what.
2) in edit person view, the ticks in the notes, source and media columns are only visible for the line that is selected, ie you have to select a line to see if any of these items are present
3) in the citation manager panel, the content of the 3 bottom boxes (Free-form, source text etc) is virtually not displayed.  A single row of text in large font appears.

Can someone advise what software I need to load into crossover to get RM to work reasonably well? Thanks.

[kbens0n]

Cedric, on 14 August 2009 - 03:02 AM, said:

Can someone advise what software I need to load into crossover to get RM to work reasonably well? Thanks.

Sounds like it might be video display driver issues and not necessarily RM 4 program execution

[Brachus]

Has anyone else tried running RootsMagic-To-Go through Wine yet?

It tries to come up, but thinks that I do not have a licensed copy, so it refuses to run from the USB drive.

Brachus

[Jonathan Bejarano]

I have RootsMagic 5 running in Linux and here are the instructions I used for Ubuntu

http://students.cs.b...cWineUbuntu.php

Jonathan (This is part of a website I am making for my Computer Science Website)

[GlennThigpen]

I have Roots Magic 6 running on Linux using CrossOver by Codeweavers. It seems to work pretty well but the help section does not show anything in the left pane.

Also, when I try to access the internet, nothing is shown in the URL window in Internet Explorer and it just hangs.

I know that this is not a Roots Magic problem, so I do not espect any technical suport, but I would like to see some support added for Linux.

Although Linux is a minor player o the desktop, the Android OS is built on the linux kernel and it should be a trivial operation to extend the port to Linux.

Glenn

[Renee Zamora]

We have committed to making a Mac version of RootsMagic.  No decision has been made on a Linux version of RM at this time.

[lostinbrave]

Renee Zamora, on 18 March 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

We have committed to making a Mac version of RootsMagic.  No decision has been made on a Linux version of RM at this time.

That is fine I talked to Bruce about it a while back and he said he would think about it. With all the work for mac and android Linux would not be to much more work, i think.

Great product thanks for all the hard work.