Why switch to Linux when everyone else teaches on Windows?
I’ll start with the ugly truth.
For three years, my oldest Mac held hostage every photo, census, and DNA match I’d sweated over.
One forced OS update turned Family Tree Maker into a $99-a-year ransom note.
**I paid once—and ended up walking away anyway.**
That was January last year. Today my entire tree (and my sanity) live happily on a six-year-old Dell laptop running Linux Mint.
Total cost after taxes? Zero.
Minutes needed to set up the core apps? About the same time it takes to microwave popcorn.
Below is exactly what I did. Copy it step-for-step if you want.
First tool: Gramps
Think of Gramps as Google Docs, but for ancestor charts.
- Drag photos into a person’s record.
- Let it auto-generate the report your cousin swears looks “printed by a museum.”
- Save everything as GEDCOM—open it anywhere later. No licence key, no drama.
Install it in one line.
Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install gramps
Fedora:
sudo dnf install gramps
Open the menu, click Gramps, and you’re in. Add your first person the same way you’d type a name in any form—and the chart builds itself.
If you already paid for Windows software
Two words: Wine and Boxes.
Wine lets most Windows apps feel native.
I have Legacy Family Tree 9 living on the same machine. After a fifteen-minute install through WineHQ it behaves like it was born here.
Simpler cheat:
- Install VirtualBox with
sudo apt install virtualbox. - Create a tiny Windows VM—2 GB RAM, 25 GB disk.
- Stuff your heirloom Windows apps inside, shut the lid when you’re done.
Unexpected perk: You can freeze the VM in one click. Screw up? Roll back in ten seconds. Computers are supposed to serve you, not the other way round.
Dig deeper: DNA, OCR, and cloud backups
I’m allergic to uploading raw DNA files to random websites. Linux fixes that, too.
To explore matches offline:
sudo apt install plink bcftools
Drop your raw .23andme or .ancestry text files into plink and peek at matches on your own hard drive.
Turn grandpa’s blurry letters into searchable text:
sudo apt install tesseract ocrmypdf ocrmypdf "1951 scan.pdf" "1951 searchable.pdf"
Save the new PDF to your Nextcloud folder and boom—three copies, two USB drives, one remote cousin finally finds the snippet she needed.
Quick start checklist (15 min)
- Burn Linux Mint to a thumb drive. Boot, click Install now.
- Update with
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y. sudo apt install gramps tesseract-ocr ocrmypdf.- Open Gramps → “Import GEDCOM” → grab your old tree.
- Add photos, press Ctrl+P, watch it print a family book your aunt will actually read.
Hiccup? Post the exact error in the Gramps Discourse forum. I’ve never waited longer than a day for an answer.
Last real-world note
This post was tapped out on that same six-year-old Dell. The light in my office is dim, but the screen’s bright. Outside, wind lashes the maple where my great-grand-uncle carved his initials. The stories we collect aren’t software specs—they’re proof that someone once stood here.
Linux doesn’t rent that history to you. It hands you the keys.
And tonight, I’ll probably add a new note about the initials in that tree.
