Ubuntu – How to add Matlab to the main menu

10.10appmenuMATLABshortcuts

I was trying to add the installed matlab to the menu of Applications under Ubuntu 10.10.

I clicked Gnome-Menu -> Preference -> Main Menu -> Programming -> New Item, where I input the Matlab file …/MatlabR2010b/bin/matlab as the command, and selected the type to be "Application". Then I finished.

But when I click the item in the menu of Applications, the Matlab icon shows up for a few seconds and then nothing else happens.

If I select the type to be "Application in Terminal", then in the last step of adding Matlab to the Applications Menu, after I click the item in the menu of Applications, there will be firstly a terminal window and then the Matlab command window.

So I was wondering how to solve the problem of Matlab not starting when the type has been selected to be "Application"? Also is there a way to eliminate the terminal appearing when the type has been selected to be "Application in Terminal"?

Best Answer

I found some useful instructions which work for me (Ubuntu 10.04).

Screeshot of the Launcher Properties The command to copy-paste after having checked your version: /usr/local/MATLAB/R2012b/bin/matlab -desktop

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Ubuntu – How to make a Matlab launcher for Unity

Garrett's answer almost works for me, but instead I have to use

StartupWMClass=sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer

This still gives an extra launcher icon while the splashscreen is visible (because the WM_CLASS of the spashscreen is just "MATLAB"), but then the window gets properly grouped under the launcher.

New instances of Matlab (started by terminal, or Synapse, or from another tty with export DISPLAY=:0) also get grouped under this launcher, and the launcher's quit option kills all of them.

I found this WM_CLASS value by using

$ xprop WM_CLASS

and then clicking on the Matlab window, a command I got from Superuser.

To prevent the temporary extra launcher icon, you can also add the -nosplash flag after the -desktop one.

So, my ~/.local/share/applications/MATLAB.desktop looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Icon=matlab
Name=Matlab
Comment=Start MATLAB - The Language of Technical Computing
Exec=matlab -desktop -nosplash
Terminal=false
Categories=Development;
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=New_Window;

Name[en_US]=MATLAB

[New_Window Shortcut Group]
Name=start a new MATLAB instance
Exec=matlab -desktop

This is on Ubuntu 12.10, with Matlab R2012b

Ubuntu – How to create launcher icon

The lock to launcher is indeed not working for matlab. There is however a .desktop file that is part of the Matlab installation.

sudo ln /usr/share/app-install/desktop/matlab-support:matlab.desktop /usr/share/applications/matlab.desktop

You have to update a few things in this file (matlab.desktop):

[Desktop Entry]
X-AppInstall-Package=matlab-support
X-AppInstall-Popcon=3
X-AppInstall-Section=multiverse

Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=matlab -desktop
Name=MATLAB
Icon=_usr_share_icons_hicolor_48x48_apps_matlab
Categories=Development;Math;Science
Comment=Scientific computing environment
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=com-mathworks-util-PostVMInit

X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=app-install-data

Give the icon an absolute file path by changing the icon path above to

Icon=/usr/share/app-install/icons/_usr_share_icons_hicolor_48x48_apps_matlab.png

And change:

Terminal=true

Now you should be able to lock the icon to the launcher as well as start matlab from there.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – How to make a Matlab launcher for Unity

Ubuntu – How to create launcher icon

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