The money dance
So I finally managed to crack the Moneydance installation on Fedora 7. Not that it’s that difficult…but it should have been more of a dance than the Tarantella it turned out to be.
Long story short: the default, non-proprietary Java runtime included with Linux distributions doesn’t seem to play well with MoneyDance, even though it’s supposed to run on most Java platforms. The solution is the installation of a proprietary Java runtime, namely the Sun JRE. While you’re at it, get the latest JRE 6 update 1. I grabbed the self-extracting file rather than the RPM package, simply because I like to put things in certain locations.
Don’t follow this step! Due to my previous attempts at doing the same thing in Ubuntu, I removed the GNU Java component from Fedora…
That takes a bit of time. Not only that, it also removes most of OpenOffice! Obviously, Java features prominently in that application suite… Not trying to be too flustered by the fact that I had removed a fairly large application, I unpacked the Sun JRE to /usr/local and after running the script for the installation, had the JRE in /usr/local/jre1.6.0_01.
That’s still not enough for MoneyDance, though. Open a terminal session and ensure that moneydance_linux_x86.sh is executable using chmod. Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable like this
and then run the Moneydance installer.
No more blank screen and success! The installation is easy from then on in and the application is available.
To resurrect my OpenOffice, I had to reinstall first the GNU Java component, and then OpenOffice. Needless to say, that was a rather time and bandwidth intensive activity that could have been avoided by never removing GNU Java in the first place. Hence we learn…
For those with a Microsoft hat on who consider the installation of a simple finance application with so many steps and traps a bit ridiculous, consider this: sometimes, computing should involve a bit of computing too 
As the developer of Moneydance I have to apologize for all that hassle. I try to make it as easy as possible to install moneydance on all platforms that we support. For some reason the GNU Java just doesn’t seem to cut it with Moneydance (and several other java apps I’ve tried) but the installer we use doesn’t recognize that and tries to go ahead, thinking it is using a standard java. We’ve got an update to MD2007 coming up that uses an updated version of the installer so hopefully that will solve this problem.
Hi Sean,
thanks very much for your reply. I fully understand the complexities in dealing with such a wide variety of platforms. Supporting all of them must be a bit of a nightmare. Frankly, I’m of the opinion that the slight discomfort in completing the installation is well worth it. You’ve developed a sterling product and one you should be proud of! I enjoyed listening to your interview on The Linux Link Tech Show and wish you lots of success.