MATLAB on Ubuntu: From Install, Make launching Icon,… to Uninstall
Here are the steps to install MATLAB + some possible problems:
- Extract/mount the zipped/iso installer file. For me I extract the iso to /home/bot/Downloads/Software/ml2011bu
- Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), type sudo sh install
- You might run into the problem say:Preparing installation files …
Installing …
eval: 1: /tmp/mathworks_2931/sys/java/jre/glnx86/jre/bin/java: Permission denied
Finished
bot@bot-laptop:~/Downloads/Software/ml2011bu$ cd sys
What you need to do is to make the file “java” executable by
from your installer folder, type
cd sys/java/jre/glnx86/jre/bin/
chmod +x java
you will see that the file permission is changed from
-rw-r–r– 1 bot bot 47308 2010-10-20 04:41 java
to
drwx–x–x 4 bot bot 4096 2012-02-11 17:55 java
Now go back to the installer folder and install it with sudo sh install, and it should work
For more details on installation, please visit
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MATLAB
Once the installation is finished, you may want to create a script to run the MATLAB. Here is how
- Go to desktop (where else is fine too)
- Create an empty document, let’s name it runmatlab.sh
- Open runmatlab.sh with gedit, and type the following
cd /usr/share/matlabr2010a/bin/
sudo sh matlab -desktop
- Open the terminal, go to desktop by typing in the terminal cd ~/Desktop
- make the script executable by typing in the terminal chmod +x runmatlab.sh
- Now you can run MATLAB by running the script by typing ./runmatlab.sh
Now, if you want to add a launching icon on the menu bar, here is how:
- Right click on the menu bar
- Edit menus>Go to Programming in the left panel
- Click new item and add all the information
- In the command, type /home/bot/Desktop/runmatlab.sh
- You can also change the icon by clicking at the icon on the top-left corner and choose where the icon is
- Here is an easy command line to download the icon
sudo wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Matlab_Logo.png -O /usr/share/icons/matlab.png
- The icon will be downloaded to /usr/share/icons/matlab.png
- That’s it!
And, if you are bored with MATLAB and want to uninstall it, please follow the steps here
- Locate the matlab dir, mine is /usr/local/MATLAB
- Remove the matlab dir by
>cd /usr/local
>sudo rm -r MATLAB
- bye bye MATLAB, and you get 5GB more space hahahaha!