My version is 0.98.2 (2011-12-30), but is the MacOSX version. It seems the GTK-G. blog is a little out of date. The latest release is 0.98.2; gtk-gnutella - The Graphical Unix Gnutella Client Download page. If you are using an out-of-date version, you will find it difficult to connect because of an internal program policy. Looks like your version is over a year old. oops

I find that GTk-G. can be slow to connect sometimes, especially if not used for a while but usually does connect well after a while. Mine just connected to 5 hosts.

My search worked fine. Lots of acceptable results.

If you see LimeWire/4.21.1 versions in the connection window, remove them, they are possibly spambots which will either send you spam in your search results or block your searches from going any further. ie: specifically LimeWire/4.21.1(rc)

If you are using Windows 7, set up a few rules in your firewall. Of course first is to allow GTK-Gnutella.
Next is to block a port ... 27016 which is used by a large percentage of spambots on the network in both the incoming and outgoing sections of the firewall for each of TCP and UDP.