Thread Subject: Problems running under Ubuntu

I'm running Matlab 2007b under Ubuntu 7.10. Most things
basically work, but it's not what you would call a pleasant
experience. Here's the specific problems I've noticed:

1. The Matlab gui is really slow. Just things like dragging
a scroll bar - I have to wait while it catches up with the
mouse cursor. When clicking an object in a different window,
it takes about a second for the new object to be
highlighted. If I use the backspace to delete a line of
characters in the editor, I have to release the key every
now and then to allow the cursor to catch up. etc. etc.

2. Pop up windows such as you get when you select 'find', or
a confirmation pop-up when deleting a file are sometimes
empty (i.e. no buttons or controls show up). I often have to
try several times to get the controls to show.

3. When using windows dialogues such as changing to a
different directory or opening a file, you have to
double-click on a file name REALLY fast in order to execute
the command, otherwise it interprets the double click as
renaming the file name. I can't see any way of altering this
setting.

I'm running a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with 1Gb RAM, by the way.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems? Is there
anything I can do to improve the performance?

Any advice much appreciated.

1 and 2. Do you have Compiz enabled? Matlab uses Java for
the gui, and Java icm Compiz can be slow. Try to disable Compiz.
3. Do you have to doubleclick that fast is all programs or
only in Matlab? There should be a Ubuntu setting for the
speed of doubleclicking, but I am not using a Ubuntu machine
at the moment, so I can't tell you where to find it.

"Kees van 't Slot" <kees.slot@mathworks.com> wrote in
message <fmhuke$ljo$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> 1 and 2. Do you have Compiz enabled? Matlab uses Java for
> the gui, and Java icm Compiz can be slow. Try to disable
Compiz.
> 3. Do you have to doubleclick that fast is all programs or
> only in Matlab? There should be a Ubuntu setting for the
> speed of doubleclicking, but I am not using a Ubuntu machine
> at the moment, so I can't tell you where to find it.
>

No, I checked and Compiz was not enabled, but I decided to
remove it completely from the system anyway. It's subtle but
I thing the response of the Matlab desktop seems better as a
result of this. Thanks for the tip.

I'm still getting pop up windows with no controls in them as
before though. A further related problem which I forgot to
mention is that sometimes the pop up windows are much bigger
than normal, with the controls just taking up the usual
space in the top left corner.

Regarding the double click, after some more searching, I
discovered this is problem that affects all Java
applications. A solution is found in the link below, which
works!

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=585358

So, I've got something that's a bit better than it was still
not trouble free. Thanks for your input anyway.

"Gnipper " <gnipper.nospam@gmail.com> wrote in message <fmh2nu$pud$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> I'm running Matlab 2007b under Ubuntu 7.10. Most things
> basically work, but it's not what you would call a pleasant
> experience. Here's the specific problems I've noticed:
>
> 1. The Matlab gui is really slow. Just things like dragging
> a scroll bar - I have to wait while it catches up with the
> mouse cursor. When clicking an object in a different window,
> it takes about a second for the new object to be
> highlighted. If I use the backspace to delete a line of
> characters in the editor, I have to release the key every
> now and then to allow the cursor to catch up. etc. etc.


we ran into this problem under ubuntu 8.0 server. Apparently the libX11 library shipped with ubuntu 8.0 has some issues (do a google search.) We solved the issue as suggested by a post on this page:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/241063
that is, we copied libX11.so.6.2.0 from a gentoo distribution over to the machine in question, put it in an accessible place, set up symlinks to it, exported LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/place/where/new/libX11/is:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and voila!

hth,