I decided to give AbiWord a try after spotting it on a magazine coverdisc. Having reached it on the DVD I figured it might be a good idea to try 'Autopackage' as well, since there was an AbiWord 'package' file on the disc. In the mag it said that simply clicking on a 'package' icon would send the computer off to download and install Autopackage, so I clicked on the AbiWord package icon and Autopackage downloaded and installed with something less than absolutely no trouble at all. All I had to do was to press 'Enter' and it would start to install Abiword it said. So I pressed 'Enter'.

I got a message "Could not find AbiWord 2.41.package".

OK. Small glitch. No problem. I clicked the icon again.

"Could not find AbiWord 2.41.package".

I've just done a quick search and no one else seems to have had this problem. Any ideas as to why I have?

make your Abiword package executable if it isn't already, then run it from the command line by going to that directory and typing ./abiword.package (or whatever it's called).

OK, after a number of false starts I finally got it right, except I now get the message:-

"autopackage-frontend-gtk: relocation error: autopackage-frontend-gtk: undefined symbol: gtk_widget_get_screen"

Would I be right in thinking that's more than one error message?

It's a bug in autopackage, thanks for reporting it. The error means that you appear to have a _very_ old Linux distribution, and AbiWord probably needs a newer Linux to run anyway even if it did install. We'll try and restore compatibility in autopackage with GTK+ 2.0 though.

Thanks. I was running Mandrake9 because it was the most reliable of the Mandrakes that would actually load on my machine. Strangely enough I did get Mandriva 2006 running except that it refused to connect to the internet, so I downgraded to M2005 and now I appear to be running perfectly, so I guess I'll give autopackage another try.