Running MATLAB in Ubuntu

I finally figured this one out!!!

Thanks to the university I was able to download a student version of MATLAB to my Ubuntu OS, but I was not able to open it because I could not get the software to verify the license. I found out that I needed to be connected to the university network, either by being present on campus or via VPN. But the university would not support a VPN software package for Linux, so I had to figure out on my own how I was going to connect to the network via VPN and then open MATLAB. Here's how I did it:

1. Follow the instructions here up to step 8. [1]

2. Keep the terminal open and type "vpn", which opens up the vpn client dialog.

3. Enter "connect vpn.cmu.edu" or whatever your VPN network address is.

4. Provide the login information.

5. The VPN client should then connect you to the network and you can begin working.

I found that even after connecting via VPN that I was not able to open MATLAB; I had the loading screen but I never managed to get the software to open. After checking the system monitor ("gnome-system-monitor" in terminal), I saw that MATLAB was only consuming 25% of my CPU resources, so it wasn't a problem with my laptop's computing power. Instead, I checked this forum and they suggested that the preferences needed to be cleared out following these steps:

1. Navigate to this folder "cd ~/.matlab"

2. Delete the settings and preferences documents in that folder with "sudo rm -rf R2018a" or whatever version of MATLAB you have.

3. Now MATLAB should run!

Good luck!

UPDATES:

1. Need to enter "sudo systemctl daemon-reload"

2. Then "alias vpn='/opt/cisco/anyconnect/bin/vpn'"

3. Then vpn command will work. Need to do this every time running MATLAB for some reason.

Sources:

[1] http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jstern/uci_vpn_ubuntu/

[2] https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/98599-why-will-matlab-not-start-up-properly-on-my-linux-or-unix-based-system