Re: [gentoo-user] Open Source Family Tree software?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Arttu V. <arttuv69@×××××.com> wrote:
> On 11/29/08, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
>> Anyone have any recommendations of something in portage. (Or not in
>> portage?)
>
> Wikipedia has some, they've even tried to categorize a bit and made
> some tables of the basic features:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_genealogy_software
>
>> I found gramps in portage. I did not find Lifelines. I haven't
>> uncovered any other project names as yet.
>
> I set up my sister's old Ubuntu box to have gramps installed and (what
> I've heard) she has been using it successfully for her intermittent
> lightweight hobby genealogy studies of our relatives from previous
> centuries.
>
> I don't actually know much about these genealogy systems, so I don't
> know if such light-weight use is what you have in mind -- and whether
> gramps is a major beast or only usable for this kind of "playtoy-use".
>
> --
> Arttu V.

Thanks. I appreciate the responses.

For what I've seen so far gramps looks like it might be the best for a
really casual Linux user and it's likely my wife will start with that.
The sort of bigger issue is once you've got your tree put together, as
best you know it, then linking it up with other trees from other folks
you don't know is a really valuable thing to do. The commercial
software guys, like Family Tree Maker, have huge contributed databases
of family trees submitted by other FTM customers. It's sort of a
racket but you can subscribe to their service and then work to link
yourself up with other groups from your extended family if they have
made contributions. I'm told the problem is you don't really know if
there's anything in their database until you start paying but you can
do it for a month or two just to see how it works out. It seems that
gramps is doing something sort of like this but one wonders just how
large their database is. Also, I'd hate for my wife to do a lot of
work entering a few hundred people only to find she cannot use the
gramps data with anything but gramps.

Might be best just to pay the money and take our chance with FTM
longer-term but maybe she'll like playing with gramps on her Linux
machine. It's really up to her. I'm just her sys-admin.

Cheers,
Mark