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According to what Steve Jobs said on WWDC 2004, there are over 12,000 OS X applications out there. It might sound a little to some but you can be sure that there is an application for the most basic needs of a mortal user.

In fact, being a recent switcher, I have found that I actually need very few applications other than what came with my ibook already installed.

But what I couldn’t find was a good personal finances app. And according to the comments made on the different finances apps on macupdate or VersionTracker, I’m not the only one.

Thanks to its UNIX underwear, Mac OS X is able to compile applications developed for other unix flavors (like linux).

Knowing this I decided to install, what is in my opinion, the best personal financial application for linux: gnucash.

Here is a small tutorial on how to make gnucash run on Mac OS X and then how to change its look via GTK themes, since the default look of gtk looks early 90s.

0. Install XDarwin.
If you don’t already have XDarwin installed download it from apple.

1. Install fink.
Go to the fink website. Download and install fink. The fink installation instructions are straightforward. Finks is accesible via Terminal but it also comes with a nice frontend called FinkCommander. Once fink is installed run FinkCommander.

2. Enable unstable packages
Fear not. I know it says “unstable” but dont worry that much. You are not alone running the unstable version of fink. Personally, I haven’t had a single problem.

To enable unstable packages go to the preferences in FinkCommander and then to the Fink tab. Enable “Use unstable packages” and “Use unstable cryptography packages”.

3. Update fink
Since we just enabled the unstable packages, we must update fink to make use of that. From the Source menu select Selfupdate-CVS and wait for it to finish. Then select Update-All from the same menu.

4. Install gnucash
Using FinkCommander, search for “gnucash”. Once you find it, highlight it and from the Source menu select install. Quite a number of files might be needed in order to install gnucash. Accept the default answers when fink asks you to choose a package. Then the downloading/compiling will start. And it will take some time (hours/days depending on your connection/cpu), but its worth the wait.

5. Install themes
For themes to work you need to install gdk-pixbuf library via FinkCommander. Install it just like you installed gnucash.

6. Download a theme
Goto Gnome’s art and pick the theme of your choice. I recommend the Emotion theme. Download it and uncompress it to your ~/.themes folder (create it if you don’t have it). Inside your theme’s directory you will find a /gtk folder and inside it, among lots of files, another one called gtkrc. This is the file that tells gtk how to use the theme.

7. Setup the theme
Create a .gtkrc file in your home folder. Inside it you need two lines:

# tell gtk where to find images
pixmap_path ".themes/Emotion-Sorrow/gtk"
# include the definition of the theme. Change this to your theme of choice.
include ".themes/Emotion-Sorrow/gtk/gtkrc"

7. Start gnucash
Launch XDarwin and when xterm pops up launch gnucash. If everything was good you will be enjoying, a better looking, gnucash.