Basic Requirements

[DuckHook]

For personal finances I stand by my recommendation for kmymoney; it's slick, quick, and very detailed, offering all that most users need for their home use.

Hated it. It was overkill for moving money around between the companies and for the paychecks of 6 people. We didn't sell anything retail, so many of the extra features Quickbooks provides wasn't useful to us (all the different tax collection rules by locality).
…Switched to Quicken Home & Business which does some stock market stuff that none of the Linux alternatives above handle. It was always fine for my LLC.

I agree with all of the above. If you don't need to conform to GAAP, then neither QuickBooks nor GnuCash are necessary. I would definitely not recommend either for consumer use. They are both overkill. I only raised it because the OP stated he was using QuickBooks (instead of Quicken). Such use implies a need for GAAP, hence the Linux equivalent had to be beefier (and fussier).

Candid admission: at the risk of offending the accountants on this forum—I HATE accounting. Absolutely loathe it. I admire those who do it well, but it's just not my thing. I spend the bare minimal amount of time doing it that I can get away with and would drop GnuCash in a heartbeat if I didn't need double entry. So, ajgreeny, I'm glad you have no need to persevere with it. It means you have better and nicer things to do with your time.

<sigh> Sometimes, I think "accounting" needs to be added to that old adage about death and taxes.

[ajgreeny]

Candid admission: at the risk of offending the accountants on this forum—I HATE accounting. Absolutely loathe it. I admire those who do it well, but it's just not my thing. I spend the bare minimal amount of time doing it that I can get away with and would drop GnuCash in a heartbeat if I didn't need double entry. So, ajgreeny, I'm glad you have no need to persevere with it. It means you have better and nicer things to do with your time.

<sigh> Sometimes, I think "accounting" needs to be added to that old adage about death and taxes.

I agree totally; it must be something devised by accountants to make sure they are more fully employed; as I say, it completely baffled me even after looking through the examples I found online.
In the days when I needed to declare income for UK taxes, having been self-employed in a very small, sole trader manner, I did everything online using the software provided by HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs) which required only simple balance sheet accounting easily done with kmymoney or even with a simple spreadsheet.

As I now have more time (thanks Covid-19!) I might even have another look at GnuCash to see if it now makes more sense to me than it used to.

[DuckHook]

…I might even have another look at GnuCash to see if it now makes more sense to me than it used to.

Why on earth would you want to do that if you don't have to?

Well, I suppose it's a bit like… ….feels so good when you stop.

[ajgreeny]

Why on earth would you want to do that if you don't have to?

Well, I suppose it's a bit like… ….feels so good when you stop.

Yes, I think you're probably correct.
However, I have just installed it and tomorrow might see if I can make sense of it.

Watch this space!

[daniell59]

I just realized something. I have an even older computer that has 2 x 2GIGs of DDR2 memory. probably at a slower speed. My motherboard has room for 2 more modules. Would this help make virtualisation more practical? Would mixing memory modules be OK? This would make it two pairs.

Thanks

[TheFu]

I don't know what you mean by "mixing memory modules."

No way to know until you try.

You can't mix DDR3 and DDR2. They don't work that way. Mixing speeds of some RAM won't work. I vaguely remember DDR2 being very picky. Some systems wouldn't boot with mixed RAM. With DDR3, they seem to boot, but used the slowest speed. With DDR4, the motherboards perform some sort of test and if the RAM won't boot at the requested speed, mine drops back to the slowest speed possible.

Some workloads are very CPU or RAM specific. It isn't always clear which is which until you try. In general, virtualization likes having more RAM available. 4G really should be fine for 1 VM, running WindowsXP. I've run KVM VMs on a 2GB Chromebook before. It was tight and I felt it, but it wasn't THAT bad. 4G was roomy enough. 6G and 1-2 other VMs were fine. 8G and I've had 4+ VMs running Ubuntu Server for months. 16G and let's load up plenty of Linux servers and 1 Windows VM.

[daniell59]

I don't know what you mean by "mixing memory modules."

No way to know until you try.

You can't mix DDR3 and DDR2. They don't work that way. Mixing speeds of some RAM won't work. I vaguely remember DDR2 being very picky. Some systems wouldn't boot with mixed RAM. With DDR3, they seem to boot, but used the slowest speed. With DDR4, the motherboards perform some sort of test and if the RAM won't boot at the requested speed, mine drops back to the slowest speed possible.

Some workloads are very CPU or RAM specific. It isn't always clear which is which until you try. In general, virtualization like having more RAM available. 4G really should be fine for 1 VM, running WindowsXP. I've run KVM VMs on a 2GB Chromebook before. It was tight and I felt it, but it wasn't THAT bad. 4G was roomy enough. 6G and 1-2 other VMs were find. 8G and I've had 4+ VMs running Ubuntu Server fine for months. 16G and let's load up plenty of Linux servers and 1 Windows VM.

I should have been more clear. I now have 2 pair. One pair has a speed of 800 the other less. They are both DDR2

[SeijiSensei]

If you give WinXP 1.5 G and leave the rest for the Ubuntu host you should have no problems running on the first machine you mentioned.

[deadflowr]

I should have been more clear. I now have 2 pair. One pair has a speed of 800 the other less. They are both DDR2

Your using the less.
Memory runs at the slowest modules speed.

[daniell59]

I just thought of something. My current memory had to be set manually because the motherboard was unable to do it automatically. The extra memory is generic without any indications of its numbers. I don't know how to deal with it in the BIOS.