The Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System, or GRAMPS, is a popular free genealogy program for use on Linux. It is powerful and easy to use and is released as one of the genealogy programs on a Linux "Live CD." That CD has now been updated to Version 4.0.
You can download the Linux Genealogy CD-ROM .iso image online and "burn it" as a complete CD. (For information about .iso images, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iso_image.) Once you have the Linux Genealogy CD, you may load the program onto a Linux system or, even better, use it as a "live CD."
A "live CD" contains a complete operating system as well as numerous applications. In the new Live CD disk 4.0, GRAMPS is one of the included applications. If you have a Windows PC, you can shut down Windows, insert the Linux Genealogy CD, boot from the CD-ROM disk and run a complete version of Linux, including GRAMPS. When completed, you can boot down, remove the CD, re-boot back into Windows and use your Windows system as if nothing had happened. Use of the "live CD" does not leave any information behind on your Windows hard drive, unless you specifically save something there yourself.
A "Live CD" is a great method of trying out Linux and any of many other Linux applications. It is a great method of taking Linux for a "test drive" without having to re-format your hard drive. This Live CD is based on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Desktop CD and, in addition to the regular Hardy, features pre-installed GRAMPS 3.0.1, GeneWeb, and LifeLines applications, as well as the GraphViz program to draw pretty graphs in GRAMPS.
As with earlier versions of GRAMPS, everything works "out of the box." For more information, look at:
http://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Linux_Genealogy_CD.
