Just for information, I have been able to compile recent versions of gretl under Ubuntu 8.04 and use a functioning version of R with a much more limited set of libraries than those that you list in your last e-mail. Based on my experience the minimum requirements are: libblas3gf (1.2.1.3ubuntu4) libblas-dev (ditto) liblapack3gf (3.1.1-0.3ubuntu2) liblapack-dev (ditto) plus the gfortran and gfortran2 compilers/libraries that you list. In the past I have encountered difficulties when too many versions of atlas, blas, lapack or fortran are installed, because the compiler or Ubuntu appears to get confused in seeking the appropriate libraries.