MATLAB 6.0 (R12) is not officially supported under Linux Mandrake 8.x, RedHat 7.1, or SuSE 7.2.
MATLAB 6.0 (R12) is officially supported under Linux distributions with a 2.2.x kernel. For more information on the system requirements for MATLAB 6.0 (R12), please see pages 1-5 through 1-7 of the "Installation Guide for UNIX for MATLAB 6.0 (R12)".
However, MATLAB 6.1 (R12.1) is officially supported under Linux distributions with a 2.4.x kernel.
