Whether it's recommended to have a SP or not, fact is some people do not, and until Gimp actually requires something that a SP installs, I don't see why it couldn't continue to allow installs on non-SP Windows, they way it did up until a recent version change.

FYI, I have a PC with WinXP that has never had a service pack installed, which has been used for web browsing almost every day for almost 10 years, and has never had any security issues.

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:17:04 -0800 From: jc
Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] Windows XP - Service Pack? To:

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:57:14 -0500, Jay Smith wrote:

I'm not sure why you would want to skip the service packs - I use an XP VM for legacy apps and testing, but the first thing I did when setting it up was to install SP3. Why not install SP2 (or SP3)? Just
curious.

However, SP2 is the last version before M$ added "phone home". A lot of
people don't trust M$. It is not an issue of whether the copy of Windoze is legal or not (which, of course it always should be), but it
is an issue that it's none of M$ business what you use the Windoze for.

I don't disagree with you about Microsoft's high-handed tactics, but being unpatched puts your system at risk, as well as others when your system is compromised or "botted." There are better alternatives (Linux, Mac) to what you're doing.