Linux and Tax software - 2009

The words 'Tax Software Linux' seems to be a fairly popular search topic. A large number of hits to this blog are people using the previous mentioned search words, or variants of those words. I also have started my search this year to see who has Linux versions of the tax software. My first site was Intuit and my searching there didn't find any mention of a Linux version. I followed this up by sending an email to the customer service email account. Within a day I received a reply from Intuit and to quote the email:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Intuit Canada.

Unfortunately, QuickTax desktop software is not compatible with the Linux systems.

It would be greately appreciated if you can send a direct feedback at feedback@intuit.com.

This will enable us to re-think about desktop version for Linux computers.

Please feel free to contact us, If you require any further assistance.

Have a nice day!

Regards,
xxxxxxxxxxx (I blanked out the name of the person here)
Intuit Canada

The nice part is that if you notice in the reply is that they have provided an email address for feedback. I have sent them a note asking if/when they will be doing a Linux version. So far I have not received any reply, but, if you are interested I would suggest you use the feedback email id and send them a note.

Year end 2008

It is now the last day of 2008 and it has been some time since I talked about spam. This year marked a real drop in the number of spam messages that I have been tracking in Yahoo, but, all my other accounts now get regular spam emails. The troubling part is that they are looking much better that a few years ago and it appears that the spammers are targeting a more select group rather than doing a blanket spam.

Since I started tracking spam mail in June 2005 I have now received a total of 17,579 emails of which 11,589 were spam. That leaves me with 5,990 (34%) of the mails were legit that I asked for. The upside is that this year 69% of my mail was legit (1,529 emails).

A few things that I keep telling everyone and bears repeating here:

1. If you get mail that purports to be from anyone asking you to re-enter or reverify your account information never click on the link provided. Go directly to their site yourself and check there.
2. Keep your firewall up-to-date and active. If you don't have a firewall get one and install it. There are a number of good free firewall packages out there.
   
3. Keep your anti-virus up-to-date and active. Again, if you don't have this software get one and install it. Like #2 there are a number of excellent packages out there for free that you can download.
   
4. Keep your Operating System (O/S) up-to-date and apply all patches immediately. It does not matter what O/S you run, keep your system up-to-date.
   
5. Keep a good set of backups. Even if you follow #2-4 hardware does fail at times and having a good current backup will go a long way to restoring all of your critical files.
6. If you get an email that sounds to good to be true... it probably is.
7. Never open up file attachments that you don't know who the sender is. Even if you know the sender, check the file first with a current virus scanner and then check with the person before trying to open the file. You are not paranoid, just prudent if you check before doing anything with that file.
8. Enable viewing of the extension of the file name. Some of the nasty packages are really '.EXE', but, shows '.ZIP' at the end of the name hoping to trick you into trying to open the package.
9. Change your passwords on a regular basis. Some people use passwords that have never changed in years, use post-it notes with the account and password or make an easily guessed password. You can make passwords that are hard to guess, but, easily remembered. If a cracker can guess your account password then they can use your identity for whatever purposes they want.
   

New hardware

Two weeks ago I went out and purchased a new machine for my work at home. I needed a machine that could handle the workload on digital editing and needed the hardware to do this. I also wanted a machine that could handle the new graphics mode of Runescape which I play on a regular basis at home.

I ended up buying the Dell Inspiron 530. It has 3 gigabytes of memory, dual core processors and 500 gigabytes of disk space and a Hauppauge WinTv tuner. The only thing is that it came with Vista and I really don't want that on my machine. Before wiping the hard drive I loaded the PCLinusOS 2007 live CD into the machine and rebooted. The first indication that I had problems was the message 'No IDE channel' and the machine refused to boot with the CD. I went to the forums and read about the problems other people were having and tried all of the command line options, but, no luck in booting the machine is PCLinuxOS 2007.

I then tried to run a number of other live CDs that I have with various amounts of success:

1. Mandriva 2008. It boots, but no Java and no ATI drivers. The tuner didn't work and the Palm M130 didn't show up on the USB bus.
2. Mint. It has Java and the ATI drivers. No tuner recognition and the Palm M130 didn't show up also.
3. Knoppix. It has Java and Firefox, but, no ATI drivers.

I tried a few other variants of PCLinuxOS, but, they either didn't recognize the SATA DVD drive, or, when installed didn't boot because of the SATA hard drive. I also tried a number of other Live CD distros, but, they either didn't boot or didn't have the same out-of-box experience I am accustomed to that PCLinuxOS delivers. They are all good distros, but, don't fit my needs:

1. Kanotix
2. Granular
   
3. Vector
4. Ultima
5. Ubuntu, Kubunt, Xubuntu.
6. Simple Mepis
7. Fedora
8. Vector
9. Sabayon
10. Berry

I ended up partitioning my machine and making it a dual-boot machine and installing Mint on the machine for now. I choose it as it is close enough to the look-and-feel of PCLinuxOS 2007 and it works with the hardware. The only thing I don't have for now is the TV tuner and the Palm M130 sync, but, those are minor issues for now. I can probably hack my way through those issues and the issues with the above distros have, but, I prefer PCLinuxOS. Mint is quite nice and auto detected everything else on my new system without a problem and the software update mechanism (adept) is almost as slick as the package manager in PCLinuxOS.

Today the PCLInuxOS development team announced PCLinuxOS 2009 Beta 1 and I am downloading that at this time and I will be giving it a try later on. No matter what I will be keeping dual-boot as there are some games that my daughter wants to play and they don't support Linux (yet).

The one lesson I learned is that when getting new hardware use the Live CD first and see how it works on the machine before doing the installation and totally hosing the system.