[Gretl-users] Re: Problem with gretl 1.7.0 (fwd)

[Allin Cottrell]

I'm forwarding a reply I sent recently with regard to gretl 1.7 on 
win9X, in case anyone else hits ths issue.

Allin Cottrell

From: Allin Cottrell
To: Dirk Van de putte
Subject: Re: Problem with gretl 1.7.0

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Dirk Van de putte wrote:

> I installed gretl 1.7 (after removing the previous version 
> 1.6.5) on my laptop (Windows Me - as the hardware doesn't allow 
> Windows XP), but was unable to open the program afterwards. Even 
> reinstalling the program didn't help, so I had to revert to 
> gretl 1.6.5

That's correct, I'm afraid: gretl 1.6.5 was the last version to 
support Windows 9X (including ME).  Gretl 1.7.0 and higher require 
an NT-based version of Windows.

I thought I had modified the gretl-for-Windows web page to reflect 
this, but I see I haven't; I'll fix that.

The reason for the change is that we've updated the version of 
GTK+ used by gretl, to take advantage of new features and numerous 
bug fixes, and newer versions of GTK+ won't run on Win9x because 
they use the "cairo" graphics library, which in turn uses some 
APIs that are implemented only on NT-based Windows.

Linux would probably run fine on your old laptop ;-)