[moneydance] New to Moneydance

[Patrick Wagstrom]

Leo Coomans wrote:
> I'm new to Moneydance.
> I have a Ubuntu system for about a week now.
> Downloaded the trial version of MD and installed it as root.
> I tried the program as a common user on the system and it fits my needs, but
> I can't save any record, nor can I remove the program in any way. The
> program also doesn't show up in the Program task bar.
> Is there a problem with the trial-version ?
> Did I do something wrong on installation?

Leo,

Nope, you didn't do anything wrong.  I'll try not to get too technical 
with the reasons of why, but basically it deals with Moneydance being a 
generic installer and not a Ubuntu specific installer.  As a result, it 
won't appear in the add/remove programs, nor will it automatically 
create menu entries for the program.

To uninstall moneydance you'll want to use the uninstall program that 
ships with Moneydance.  On my system, where I installed moneydance into 
/opt/moneydance, I would run "sudo /opt/moneydance/uninstall" to 
uninstall the program.

If you want to launch the program from your menu structure you'll need 
to use a menu editor, which on my version of Ubuntu Edgy (October 2006), 
is not the most direct thing to find.  The program is called "alacarte" 
(get it, it lets you select particular things from a menu).  It may not 
be installed by default on your system - and as near as I can tell it's 
not available from the Applications->Add/Remove programs dialog.  Here's 
what you'll want to do.  Open up a terminal 
Applications->Accessories->Terminal.  Then install alacarte with the 
command "sudo apt-get install alacarte".  The run alacarte by just 
typing "alacarte".

Alternatively, I've found it easier just to put launchers for most of my 
applications on the gnome panel at the top of the screen.  You can 
right-click on empty space in your panel and select "Add to Panel", then 
click on "Custom Application Launcher" for name enter "Moneydance" for 
command enter "Moneydance" or "/usr/local/bin/Moneydance" and click on 
the icon and paste in the following string for the icon 
"/opt/moneydance/.install4j/Moneydance.png"

Yeah, it's not straightforward.

Maybe in the future we can get some .desktop files shipped with 
Moneydance for Linux and have it put the icon in /usr/share/icons or 
something like that.

Anyway, hope this helps.

--Patrick