Thank you for installing GNU Octave!
Octave 10.3 is a minor release which mainly fixes bugs and regressions found since the release of version 10.2. It should be feature and API compatible to Octave 10.1.
Octave 10.1 is a major release with many new features and improvements. Among other things, it brings updates for Matlab compatibility (notably a substantial overhaul of the moving window functions) and performance improvements for some built-in functions.
Octave 10 is not feature or API compatible to Octave 9 or earlier. Binaries
(.oct or .mex files) need to be re-built when
upgrading from Octave 9 or earlier to this version.
Starting with Octave 10, .mex files are linked with the new
library liboctmex.dll. That means that it should no longer be
necessary to rebuilt .mex files when upgrading from Octave 10 to
newer versions in the future. That might allow package developers to more
easily distribute .mex files in binary form.
Octave for Windows 9.2 or newer is built with Qt6. This should improve the user experience on screens with DPI scaling.
Binaries are no longer distributed for Windows 32-bit (or WoW64) by the Octave project.
Since Octave 7, the minimum required version of the Windows API is 6.1 (Windows 7 or newer).
A full list of changes can be found in the Release Notes from the News
menu or by typing news on the command prompt.
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.
More than 50 Octave packages are included with Octave for Windows. However, these packages must be loaded in order to use them.
pkg list command.pkg load PACKAGENAME command.Some of these packages are slightly modified to run on Windows or to install
correctly with this version of Octave. Re-installing some of these bundled
Octave packages from the packages index with
pkg install -forge PACKAGENAME might break these modifications.
More packages are available from Octave Packages.
During the installation, a default BLAS library was selected. The installer contains two BLAS implementations, the NetLib reference BLAS and OpenBLAS.
The implementation by OpenBLAS tries to use the CPU features available on the system. That means that it might perform faster than the reference implementation. On the other hand, using it might result in higher round-off errors.
The used implementation can be changed after installation with the "BLAS Switcher" in the Start menu.
During installation, an OpenGL renderer was selected. Octave for Windows includes a software OpenGL renderer (llvmpipe by Mesa 3D). That renderer can be used if the OpenGL renderer drivers installed on the system aren't working as expected.
Note that the OpenGL renderer installed on the system might be hardware accelerated. That means it might perform much faster than the software OpenGL renderer.
The OpenGL renderer used by Octave can be changed after installation with the "OpenGL Switcher" in the Start menu.
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.
The Octave GUI is currently not compatible with the new Windows Terminal App. Please, switch the default to the (legacy) Windows Console Host for Octave to work correctly. See, e.g., these instructions by Microsoft for how to change the default terminal and select "Windows Console Host".
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.