Over the weekend the GnuCash development team launched the latest development release of the free open source personal finance and accounting software known as GnuCash. The 2.1.0 release has a been built to work on Windows in addition to Linux and Mac OSX.

GnuCash 2.1.0 released

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.1.0 aka "Opening Windows", the first of several unstable 2.1.x releases of the GnuCash OpenSource Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.2.0. With this new release series, GnuCash is available on Microsoft Windows for the first time, and it also runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX. This release is intended for developers and testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there.

Windows users will soon have a free open source alternative to Intuit's Quicken and Microsoft's Money programs for managing their personal finances.

As someone who made the switch from Windows to Linux at the beginning of this year, 2007, (Read about it here, in my GnuCash 2 week update)I view the announcement with mixed feelings.

On the one hand bringing this excellent application over to the Windows platform will assure a big jump in the number of people who try it and adopt it to manage their personal finances. More users means more interest in developing the package; which in turn should mean better software.

On the other hand it now means one less reason to make the switch from Windows to Linux.

On balance I'm in favor of the move. After all, Windows users need a really decent personal finance application like GnuCash too.

OK, all kidding aside, this is great news for both the GnuCash development team as well as for users.

It's still a little too soon for Windows users to make the switch though. GnuCash 2.1.0 is only a development release. It is unstable - prone to crash at any time for no reason in particular. In short, you should not use it to really do your finances.

For those looking for some excitement, the 2.1.0 release can be downloaded here:
http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash

The GnuCash home page is here:
http://www.gnucash.org