(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I downloaded ftree, extracted it, stuck it in the right directory and shazaam! it works like a charm. The learning curve was fairly shallow and I was able to use it almost immediately.

I don't expect this is the program for really serious genealogists, but for rank amateurs, like me, it works really well and I've been having a lot of fun messing with it. I'd kind of like to get some of this information saved before any more of the older generation die off. Time is VERY short. As far as older generations go, I guess I'm getting close to being about next in line -- kind of spooky.

I have some old data that was on paper that traces parts of the family back to 18th century Germany and Scandinavia. It was easy to get it put into the program and now I think I have it saved so that most genealogy programs can open it.

What fun.

G'day,
A brief follow-up on the latest wine (they've got to version 1.0 at last) and Windows family history software.

The commercial Roots Magic 3 ($30US but the free trail version - 9MB download - can do quite a lot by way of evaluation) now appears to work fully with Puppy and wine 1.0. The Wine testers have given Roots Magic a "platinum" rating.

Running the trial version, I can add people pictures which had previously been reported as causing the program to crash.
Modifying or adding data opens a non-full-screen window which becomes the working window leaving an inoperative full window behind. The new window has to be full-screened to keep going - switching back to the original window was not successful.

Some dialog boxes were slow to do their thing, but eventually did so.

I found Roots Magic 3 fairly similar to PAF5 but without the font problem of PAF5. A Roots Magic 4 is promised by the programmers to be coming soon.

David S.

As a newcomer to both linux and puppy I was disheartened to find little here for the serious genealogist. I have been a long time user of Legacy family tree which I feel is the best. I tried to get it to work with wine but it just won't! I don't know if Gramps will work with puppy yet, anyone else know? I have looked at Ftree but think it is way to lightweight for my needs, Rootsmagic is a possibility but I am not sure yet, still evaluating it. PAF won't accept my gedcom for some reason so that's out. What am I missing here! Don't tell me I will have to go back to XP please!

This is one strong contender, since it uses browser interface as the user GUI. It has also many localisations.

http://www.geneweb.org/en/download.html

I do not know how well it would work with Puppy, since the dB part of it will be configured as a local host. Probably quite well after some tweaking by a Linux expert.

I have used it in MacOSX and Windows.
It doesn't crash and handles large amounts of data.

(Continued 29.October).
I have tried to install it to Puppy with no success. The package is downloaded and is extracted well. The obstacle is getting the gwsetup to work properly. An installer would be required for persons with modest knowhow like me.

The idea of Geneweb is to launch first "gw service" which is a compiled executive running in RAM. After that you need to run "gwsetup" at least once. When run, and after databases have been defined, the rest will be handled by a browser. Anything going to the database(s) is input via the browser UI, or imported via GEDCOM files. The importation, exportation and report generation are all possible with the browser GUI. That fits very well with Puppy ideology. The gw service reserves maybe 1 or 2 M RAM: It is not a heavy application.

Bonjour,
Here is OhmiGene 2.21 linux version (special offer for Toutou Linux and Puppy linux users by the owner). It is a french localized program. I know it exists an english version for Windows and Mac.
I've made a Pet package for french people. Download here
The package creates two entries in the menu Personal. One for the application, the other for the help (Aide in french ).
Here is the English web page of OhmiGene.
Cordialement

G'day,
A brief update on some Windows family history programs.
The semi-most-recent version of wine in Pet form, wine-1.1.7, rectifies the erratic fonts problem with PAF5.
Legacy 6 still just about opens but stalls for me when it tries to call up a html page and wine wants to load the gecko rendering engine which does not seem to work, even with winetricks.
Legacy 4 will load under wine-1.1.7 (the password is "history") and import a GEDCOM. Display is a bit crude however.
Roots Magic 3 still looks reasonable under wine, with Roots Magic 4 soon to be released.
David S.

RootsMagic 4

RootsMagic 4

RootsMagic 4 is out in a pre-beta trial now. The GUI seems improved. Definitely not ready for real use, but appears to maybe run OK with wine.

I don't mean to get off topic at all but does anyone know if any of these possibilities is compatible with Windows programs like Familytree Maker. my aunt has our genealogy tracked back to around 800 A.D. and it would be fun if the databases were compatible.
Scott

Yes, these and most such programs use GEDCOM files.

(GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software)

There may be problems linking attached photos, but the basic data is no problem.

thanks!
Scott

G'day genies,

Another update on Wine and Windows genealogical programs.
I have now Wine-1.1.40 installed in a few recent Pups and have no problems running Roots Magic 4 (as the free trial) and PAF5.

I have installed the Mozilla Gecko cab file to /usr/share/wine/gecko - this sometimes had come up via a wine dialog box as being needed. I now get Legacy 6 to at least start, open a family data file, and take new text data. It won't shut down correctly when, I assume, the prompt for a backup occurs.

I have not tried adding media data or files to these programs which is a problem sometimes reported with these under wine.

So for these very good Windows genealogy programs, wine is getting better, on the whole, but it is still possibly safer to do your basic stuff on your dual-boot Windows and just look at the data on Puppy/wine.

David S.

ttuuxxx compiled a Geneology program for Puppy. It is available at
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... =491195689

G'day,

If you've read through this thread, you'll notice a number of mentions of the Windows-based genealogy program 'Legacy' and a similar number of regrets that it doesn't quite run in Wine.

So I'm very happy to post that green_dome's semi-latest wine pet installed in a number of Puppies on my desktop now enables Legacy to open, edit and save substantial files of family history. I use Legacy 6 so I don't know if Legacy 7, the newest version, will also work.

It is important to put the required .cab file in the right gecko directory.

I expect green_dome's latest wine pet of wine-1.2 will also enable Legacy6, but I haven't had a chance to try wine-1.2 yet.

David S.

Let's see....Windows and Successful.........does not compute. I have used Paf, Roots and Ancestral Quest. Windows itself screws up all of them.

Roots has the best thing. Roots on a usb stick, the program and your data. At least when Windows does foul up, your data and program can plug into any computer.

Please, I want to use Puppy, but it we can not get gramps to work, I will go to Ubuntu. Anyone know of a pet for 5.1.1? Thanks in advance to all you smart people.javascript:emoticon(':lol:')

G'day zippytex,

Sorry to hear you've had problems with Windows and certain genealogy software.

I tried this pet of Gramps (but not in 5.1.1):

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=49722

but I prefer other programs for holding & displaying my family history data.

David S.

RootsMagic v.4 is arguably the best genealogy software. I have used it and its predecessors for years. It's for Win2k. XP, etc. I run puppy QNop 1.2 only now, and for some time I used VirtualBox also, mainly just for this program.

I dropped Vbox recently and now run RootsMagic on wine-1.1.39-p4.pet. There are some limitations: I can't display attached pdf documents inside RootsMagic (jpgs are fine) and some of the auxiliary internet links don't work.

I do have hopes of getting the pdf display to work (any ideas?) and it generates pdf reports of course. For data entry and maintenance, everything else AFAIK - it's fine.

Of course I run it in /mnt/home/ to keep it out of the save file. If you're moving it from a windows installation you'll need to do a search and replace to get the addresses of pictures and pdfs right for the new folder name.

davids45 wrote:G'day zippytex,

I tried this pet of Gramps (but not in 5.1.1):

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=49722

but I prefer other programs for holding & displaying my family history data.

David S.

Has anyone else tried this Gramps pet and have any comments on it? I guess the essence is, is there any other Gramps pets out there that are more stable/recent?

For sure, having Gramps on a netbook running Puppy must be a powerful ally for genealogists on the go, being able to bring a compact workstation without sacrificing neither speed nor flexibility and versatility...

Gramps full iso
Description

Gramps is a genealogy program for Linux, Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD that allows you to easily build and keep track of your family tree. It supports the GEDCOM standard, allows fine grained privacy controls and can generate many different types of reports (descendant trees, graphs, connection diagrams, ....)