Problem running Matlab from launcher icon

Question

I referred this link for my problem: How to create launcher icon

Though my matlab icon is already created, whenever I click it this shows up for a few seconds:

Then, the application closes itself automatically!

I have to run it from the terminal every time for MATLAB to actually open and go beyond the splash screen:

/usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/matlab

Though the above method works perfectly, I want to be able to run it properly from the icon, I can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

As mentioned in the link above, of the top voted answer I did this first:

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

Then deleted all the contents of the .matlab file and replaced it with:

[Desktop Entry]
X-AppInstall-Package=matlab-support
X-AppInstall-Popcon=4
X-AppInstall-Section=multiverse

Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/matlab -desktop
Name=MATLAB
Icon=/usr/share/app-install/icons/_usr_share_icons_hicolor_48x48_apps_matlab.png
Categories=Development;Math;Science
Comment=Scientific computing environment
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=com-mathworks-util-PostVMInit

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

When I retry doing the first step, I get the following message:

ln: failed to create hard link '/usr/share/applications/matlab.desktop': File exists

Then I tried creating a soft-link as suggested in one of the answers:

ln -s /usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/matlab /usr/local/bin/matlab

Nothing seems to work for me, help!

Answer 1

There are 2 problems with your approach.

1. you use hardlink instead of symlink explained here
2. you switched target and link paths. It should be sudo ln -s pathToLink pathToTarget

So this is the corrected command:

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