Welcome

Thank you for installing GNU Octave!

Octave 6.4 is a minor release which mainly fixes bugs and regressions found since the release of version 6.3.

Some fixes made it necessary to break ABI compatibility between Octave 6.2 (and earlier) and Octave 6.3 (and later). If you are updating from Octave prior to version 6.3, re-build any binaries (like .oct or .mex files) when updating to this version.

A full list of changes can be found in the Release Notes from the News menu or by typing news on the command prompt.

Changed default installation location

Since version 6.1, Octave installs to the system wide default program installation location (likely inside C:\Program Files\GNU Octave) by default.
It is a known issue that some operations might fail if Octave is installed in a location containing spaces if short file names have been disabled for the file system of the installation folder. Some systems seem to have disabled that feature for some partitions (e.g., on D:). If you are unsure whether your file system supports short file names, chose an installation folder that doesn't contain spaces.

It is now also possible to install Octave without administrative privileges.
In that case (or if an admin choses to install for the "local user" only), the default installation location is inside %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\GNU Octave.

BLAS Library Selection

During the installation, a default BLAS library was selected. The installer contains two BLAS implementations, the NetLib reference BLAS and OpenBLAS.

The used implementation can be changed after installation with the "BLAS Switcher" in the Start menu.

Included Octave Forge Packages

A number of Octave-Forge packages has been included with Octave for Windows. However, the packages must be loaded in order to use them.

• To list the available installed packages, use the pkg list command.
• To load a package in order to use its functions, use the pkg load PACKAGENAME command.

Other packages are available from Octave-Forge.

General information for Octave on Windows

Octave is developed primarily on GNU/Linux. The programs and wrapper scripts bundled in this installer make a best effort to provide a seamless experience of Octave on Windows.
However, there are some (minor) limitations and idiosyncracies on that platform. Please, read the corresponding article for further information and possible work-arounds.

Contributing to Octave

Octave has a community that lives from its users. You are welcome to share with that community.

For help and support, visit the Octave Discourse forum.

Please, report any problems with Octave on the Octave website.