Matlab crashes on startup (java.lang​.NullPoint​erExceptio​n) on Fedora Linux

As soon as I launch matlab with ./matlab the window opens and I get this message. What can I do?

When I close the error window matlab stays open but I can't click on anything and it crashes a few seconds later.

Answer 1

[Tom Hearn]

I have the exact same question after updateing to fedora 36 today. So I reinstalled matlab. This was a chore as I had to remove the libfreetype libraries to get it to work and then make sure root had access to the proper libraries. I got it reinstalled but it didn't solve the problem! What is going on?

[Image Analyst]

What did tech support say when you called them? You DID call them, right?

[Tom Hearn]

Well, I was hoping someone would respond here but I'll have to contact them.

Answer 2

[Doug]

This issue cropped up on me today; I was able to resolve it by blowing away (well ... moving, to be safe) my ~/.matlab/R2022a folder and letting MATLAB create a new one on startup. I'm not sure which file(s) caused the problem, but I just copied my history over to the newly created directory and that was good enough for me ...

[Lukas Brändli]

Thank you!

This solved my exact same issue with R2022b on Manjaro Linux (Arch derivate).

[Pablo]

I'm running MATLAB R2023a on WSL - Ubuntu, I can run command line matlab, but opening files on the GUI isn't working and throws this exception.

Even clearing (moving) this ~/.matlab directory didn't solve the issue.