I currently do the majority of my Research on Ancestry, using RM10 as an offline backup, but also to amend Ancestry - especially place naming conventions ( Ancestry’s inconsistencies drive me mad!)
Anyway with the demise of Win 10 in October, and all three of my devices not being Win11 capable (at least without workrounds than M$ will probably disable randomly in future) I am looking at options
I could run on Win 10 but it needs to be online for Ancestry etc and security will become an issue
I will probably move to Linux Mint but I really have no experience with WINE and how well/if RM plays in Linux
as for the W10 issue coming in October (not being supported by Microsoft) that probably impact many users. Of course this is less a RM question / issue. I am not connected to RM in any way but – I do not think it would be a good idea to divert “resources” to build and support a third platform. There are not many companies (actually none I am aware of ) that build software to work for Win, Mac & Linux.
As to users running RM on Linux I have some users have been able to but not sure to what degree and how they did it and with what success.
One clear option to consider is to dump Microsoft for Mac OS which runs RM10 natively. You would get quality hardware and software for a similar price and a vastly superior user experience.
Given that you’re considering Linux, you’re probably at least somewhat technically inclined. So another option you might consider is a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) conversion. There are various options out there for turning your physical PC into a virtualized one that can run as a program on your new platform.
In your case, you’d capture your existing Win10 PC that runs RootsMagic into a virtual system. The virtual PC can be configured to have Internet access through your host device, so staying connected to Ancestry for sync’ing is still possible. Once you’ve confirmed that the virtual PC functions properly, you can move it’s associated VHDs to a temporary safe place and reimage the physical PC as a Linux box. Once the Linux box is up and running, and has a suitable hypervisor running, you can move the Win10 VHDs over to it and launch the virtual PC.
The technicalities of it are beyond what I want to get into here on the RM forums, but just do a Google search of “P2V” and you’ll find all kinds of information. You can also skim this Reddit post for some hints.
I’ve been using a virtual machine running VirtualBox (free), it was my best solution.
My host OS is Ubuntu 24, the guest vm is Win10, where I run RM10. RM is one of the few Windows apps I still use.
With this config I particularly like having Ubuntu apps and browsers open at the same time as the VM is running W10 with RM open, and they can share the the mouse & keyboard, cut & paste, but I have lots of screen real-estate with three monitors to take advantage of that, not as useful with only one monitor.
VB allows W10 guest complete access to my host Internet, although I choose for security reasons to use the Linux browser windows to access the web and genealogy sites. For that reason only, I’m not as concerned about MS discontinuing W10 updates at this time.
Linux can be lean and fast, but Windows is not. To run a W10/W11 on a Linux host takes significant resources: disk space, graphics, RAM, and fast multiple cores. I am running VM with W10 on 14 yo PC, but at one time it was a high-end engineering workstation so I can get away with it. I might add, I cannot upgrade my VM with W11 because the underlying CPU does not have a Microsoft required feature, the same reason so many otherwise fine PC’s cannot be upgraded to W11.
Several years ago I had a lot of trouble with RM9 features not working with Win7, so I tried RM9 with Wine using Linux Mint 21, it fixed some issues but cause others. At that time I read on this forum that others were successful. It was because of these issues I researched and chose the VirtualBox solution, bought a cheap W10 license.
I doubt we’ll ever see a native Linux version of RM.
RM 10 doesn’t run natively on newer Mac computers (the ones with the M-series chips that began around 2020). RM 10 is an Intel-based app that runs under Rosetta on the new Macs.
If I’m wrong, please let me know where I can download a version of RM 10 that does run natively. I would love that because it would run faster on my machines.
In this image of the Get Info pane my RM 10 on my M2 Mac, it says Intel after the application name. If the app ran natively on my Mac, it would say “universal” instead of “intel.”
Intel code RM is all that is available but it does run without emulation on mac once translated by Rosetta. They should have an apple silicon version but most of their customers are probably Windows users the mac people having drifted away during the RM7 and 8 era.
Starfish: I think it is mentioned elsewhere that WINE is not compatible with RM8 and later. I was on Windows 10 and RM9 and had made the decision for various reasons to leave Windows. Genealogy was one of two functions for which the Windows app I used was not available on Linux. So, my initial plan was to run both OSs until I could finish up some huge RM9 cleanup [corruption that had come in over the years from using Ancestry, MyHeritage and other sources.] I learned that WINE would not work, so looked into virtual, and tried VMWare. I could never get RM9 to function under VMWare. But that could well be a combination of it undergoing changes due to new ownership and direction, and me still being in the learning phase with Linux [I opted for Mint 21.]. When I thought more about the issue, I realized that trying to use RM9 under Linux was rather like the old saying about putting the cart before the horse. I knew by then that I was going to commit to Linux, independent of the genealogy software question; I was staying far away from interacting with other online genealogy software; and I already knew that RM9 was far too limited at 200 mb for the website I wanted to use for sharing with the family. So I looked carefully at alternatives and found that the open source GRAMPS would make sense for me. I mention this, not to denigrate RM9 in any way - I used and enjoyed RM through the 7, 8 and 9 levels. But my point is… make your decision about overall OS first. If you want to stay with M$, it will obviously involve equipment upgrade as well as going to W11. If you find that on balance a change to Linux is your route, then you might be able to get a workable RMx solution, but you are not limited to RMx. Personally, I would be totally surprised if RM ever came up with a Linux version: I sense that even going to the Apple world has caused problems, and they still struggle with Windows - as does any developer who has to work with these OSs. For what it’s worth, I was able to find a good solution in the Linux world for the other app area that I was originally going to have to remain in Windows for - a suite of Audio visual tools that I use for my music and video/picture collection. Bottom line - decide what is the best overall operating environment for you, then you’ll be able to get a software / application solution. As you’ve seen with Ancestry and RMx, it’s not a perfect world, no matter how hard the developers try to meet our demands.
I really do not see myself spending yet more money on windows computers - no doubt Windows 12 will require yet another hardware upgrade… I will look at Gramps but what I really want is the ability to create an offline backup of my Ancestry database and be able to easily sync as I update Ancestry. So far RM has been the best option
I can understand that. Sometimes it seems to me that trying to find simple and effective solutions is harder than it should be! Anywayn as you work through your Windows or other issues if I can help or you want to just bounce ideas I’m glad to try to help. Good luck in the process!
