Can I install MATLAB in Bash on Ubuntu on Windows?

The Windows 10 Anniversary update (Windows 10 build 1607) has an option to install a Bash shell based on a minimal Ubuntu 14.04 environment. Can I install MATLAB in this environment?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Bash on Ubuntu on Windows is a minimal installation of Ubuntu and therefore lacks many of the libraries that MATLAB requires to install and run that would be present in a normal Ubuntu Linux installation. This configuration is not qualified for MATLAB.

Answer 2

[Winston Yu]

There are several things need to be fixed for default ubuntu on Windows 10

1. update basic library (for R2018a, MATLAB use glibc 3.4.22)

sudo apt-get install libstdc++6
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

2. install display library like mesa library (assume you are using opengl)

apt-get install mesa-utils

3. install jdk

apt-get install default-jdk

4. install execstack

apt-get install execstack

5. As George Yammine suggest, clean ELF of blas and lapack library, at matlabroot/bin/glnxa64, run command:

execstack -c libmwblas.so

execstack -c libmwlapack.so

execstack -s MATLAB

[Winston Yu]

Of course, I assume you want to use graphical MATLAB, so you might want to install Xwindows software like Xming at your Windows 10 host, and in Ubuntu shell, set "export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0'

Answer 3

[Winston Yu]

Mathworks now have mpm package to installing Linux binary: matlab-dockerfile/MPM.md at main · mathworks-ref-arch/matlab-dockerfile · GitHub

So, on WSL2, run these steps

sudo apt-get install -y unzip

wget https://www.mathworks.com/mpm/glnxa64/mpm

chmod +x mpm

./mpm install --release=R2018a --destination=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2018a MATLAB

Then MATLAB will be installed /usr/local/MATLAB/R2018a

Mahmod, you can't use /mnt/d to do any installation operation and also can't install MATLAB at /mnt/d, /mnt is Windows NTFS filesystem, can't be used as true Linux file system, you need to install the software somewhere else.

Answer 4

[Jestzer]

For installation alone, you can use MATLAB Package Manager to do an installation with minimal fuss.

However, you'll probably still have issues launching MATLAB because you're probably missing plenty of libraries. To see which ones you're missing, run the MATLABWindow application until you no longer get any library errors and it launches. By default, MATLAB R2022b installs to /usr/local/MATLAB/R2022b and the MATLABWindow application is in /usr/local/MATLAB/R2022b/bin/glnxa64. Its name is literally MATLABWindow, so you can do ./MATLABWindow once you've cd'd into the folder. Obviously, you'll need to change folder I mentioned above if you're not using R2022b or installed it elsewhere.

This approach worked for me on WSL2 with Ubuntu and Debian. If you don't know which libraries to install, use this search page.

Answer 5

[Winston Yu]

Mahmod :

Same as /mnt/d, /mnt/c is not a good place to install any WSL2 based software, it's NTFS also. you have to install the software not on /mnt and not use anything at /mnt during the installation.

I feel that your WSL2 installation is corrupted, the error message like:

mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/home/daren/.cache’: Permission denied

indicate that something wrong with your WSL2 installation

Winston

[Walter Roberson]

The default linux file system, ext4, is case-sensitive unless you specifically configure otherwise (Linux 5.2 and later.)

The default Windows filesystem, is case-insensitive unless you specifically enable case-sensitivity https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-ntfs-treat-folders-case-sensitive-windows-10

This difference between expected case-sensitivity, but getting case-insensitivity, can cause problems. This is one reason not to install Linux on NTFS file systems.