Gramps is a very neat application that allows you to keep track of your family members and their ties, with a host of features including events and places. The program is completely free and open source.
Installation & Requirements
The installation of Gramps is quite quick as it does not offer a lot of options, apart from selecting a language and a destination folder. The application supports multiple operating systems, including Windows, OS X and Linux.
Interface
The program’s design is simply beautiful, keeping in line with what most people imagine when they hear anything about genealogy. Everything is made simple, from trees connecting one family member to another to all the events that you can place them in. It all seems to connect in a very cool way, allowing you to see information about everyone in your family tree from generations ago to the present day.
Of course, it all takes a bit of work as the program hands almost anything out freely. There is no solid database of people, especially for those whose family members have been scattered around the globe, so you have to do all the work yourself. This can be pretty useful because you might not care about your ancestry but you do want to see the connected dots of your family at least a far back as you can personally remember.
The results, of course, vary from one individual to another. Someone who has put a lot of work into detailing their family’s tree and attaching a variety of places, events and sources to them will be able to look at a far greater project than someone who is too lazy to do all that. That should be obvious for most people but there will be some who will look at the program’s screenshots and wonder why theirs does not look as good.
This is truly a shame because the program provides all the right tools for someone to build a great genealogy timeline. The features are simple to use and quite intuitive, making most work seem like a breeze for those interested enough in it. Adding people, locations, citations and everything you need to make the perfect family tree is there for you to manage with everything blending to create awesome results.
Every term is kept simple, so that anyone can use the program. If it were aimed only at professionals, the whole thing would be made redundant as most people that are interested in genealogy are amateurs who simply want to have some fun by creating a family tree on their electronic devices instead of just seeing it on paper and frame like you have probably seen in so many pictures. As you might have understood already, however, this does not mean that Gramps does not offer enough features; quite the contrary, if I may say so.
Pros
-Brilliant interface
-Tons of easy-to-use features
-Aimed at a wide audience
-Multiple tools available for the more experienced techies
-No previous genealogy knowledge required
Cons
-Needs quite a lot of invested time for results to be produced
Conclusion
Gramps is a fantastic tool, giving people the chance to create amazing family trees with wholly fleshed out features that contain something for everyone. If you are willing to invest a fair bit of time inserting data for this and that person, you will have something quite neat on your hands once you are done.
