I’m trying to get a finance package running on Linux so my 90 year old dad doesn’t have to learn a new system. His old hardware is starting to give out and supposedly I can get MoneyCounts v9 to run using Wine. Searching the web isn’t helping for this specific program.
At this point it’s saying I need “rdm330.dll” but I wouldn’t be surprised if other .dll’s are going to be needed as well. Does anyone have experience using Wine? (The software - I’m adept handling the bottle!)
Wow, thats a message written in something similar to English but looks like secret code.
I just realized my tech skills will never catch up. I might rank as “Jurassic Tech”.
I differ to a generation younger than myself.
In general, the AppDB on the Wine website is the go-to for this type of thing. It’s a database of applications that includes how well they work in Wine and any tweaks that may be necessary. ProtonDB also exists specifically for games running under Proton (Valve’s version of Wine).
Unfortunately, MoneyCounts does not appear in the AppDB. I spent ~10 minutes scouring the internet, and pretty much came up empty handed.
I think your best bet is to fire up a virtual machine and load the software there. My limited internet research suggests that you’ll need a pretty old version of Windows - I’d suggest using whatever version your dad was using. Install media for older Windows versions is pretty easy to find and, IIRC, Microsoft actually makes VM images of some older Windows installs available to download at no cost. If you have that working, you may be able to find that specific DLL and copy it over to your Linux host to continue trying to run it in Wine, but I agree with your suspicion that you may only be scratching the surface on that.
Another alternative would be finding a way to convert the MoneyCounts data for use in other software.
Dad’s currently using a virtual XP instance. His hardware is pretty old and I’d like to find a solution that will last longer than he does. He lives several hundred miles away so I can’t easily support this.
Do you know what versions of Windows would support a virtual 32-bit machine? Windows usually pushes us to newer hardware VS Linux which often supports older hardware. I’m not great at Windows and have been assuming Linux/Wine would offer a better solution but I could easily be wrong.
I haven’t used any VMs in a Windows host for a very long time, but I imagine that support for a 32-bit guest OS is a feature/limitation of the VM software, not so much the host operating system. I would expect any modern (64 bit) version of Windows would be fully capable of running a 32-bit virtual machine with Windows XP.
If we could figure out how to run it with Wine, we probably could offer a much better experience for him, but as it stands it seems like with either Windows or Linux he’s going to be running it in a virtual machine. Once inside the VM, the experience is identical between host OS’s - other than maybe some guest/host integrations that definitely add some QoL, but only if you’re actively using the host and guest OSs at the same time.
If you don’t have the budget for new hardware, a couple hundred bucks will get you a modest but perfectly usable used or refurbished rig capable of running Windows 10 and possibly still having it installed - though I wouldn’t recommend keeping it. Install your distro of choice, add whatever VM you like, and he oughta be set for at least the next few years.
Wine is really pretty amazing, and its unfortunate that this particular piece of software doesn’t work and is too old/obscure to sort it out 
, but if your dad is already doing the VM thing maybe it’s not a big deal for him to keep doing that just with newer hardware.
You may need to copy that dll file to the directory with the executable. (Sometimes old software installs in a way that worked on prior Windows, but doesn’t in Wine or current Windows. There’s a command to get wine to recognize dlls that do this, but I can’t remember it right now.) You may also need to go into the Applications and change the Windows version to act more like and older version.
As far as virtual machines, If you are already using XP Mode (Which is a VM) or a different virtualized mode, then it can probably be run under Linux with little modification.
I am new to Linux, but have done a couple successful install refurbishing old machines. My wife uses Microsoft money also, but on an aging laptop. I am running mint cinnamon on one of the refurbs and loaded GnuCash. It imported the qif file from MsMoney, but we haven’t tried it out yet.
@dom @jameslancaster I just now used a hex editor to search the main executable for “DLL”. I created a list of the DLL’s and noted the ones that aren’t in the application directory. Dad should have his machine back in a couple of days and I’ll ask him to look for them on his computer. Hoping he can send me the missing ones.
He sent his laptop to me because it wouldn’t turn on. Of course it booted right up while I had it. Being his finances, I wanted to get the machine back to him quickly. At this point I wish I held onto it long enough to try and grab more than the software directory. sigh.