Do I need to uninstall/reinstall MATLAB on Ubuntu when I upgrade to a new release of Ubuntu?

I am currently running Ubuntu 20.04 and MATLAB 2023a. I would like to upgrade my Ubuntu release to 22.04. Do I need to uninstall MATLAB and then reinstall it after the Ubuntu release upgrade or is MATLAB sufficiently self contained that upgrading my Ubuntu release should cause no problems?

Answer 1

[Sai Teja G]

Hi AJ,

I understand that you want to know whether you are supposed to reinstall MATLAB in your upgraded Ubuntu OS.

In most cases, updating your operating system (OS) should not require you to reinstall MATLAB. MATLAB is designed to be compatible with different operating systems, and updates to the OS should not affect the functionality of MATLAB itself.

However, there can be rare instances where a major OS update or a significant change in the system environment may impact MATLAB's compatibility. In such cases, you may need to update or reinstall MATLAB to ensure it works smoothly with the updated OS.

Hope it helps!

[Walter Roberson]

However... Updating Ubuntu can lead to problems, such as described at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1978579-why-do-some-matlab-features-fail-on-ubuntu-23-04-and-debian-12-with-exit-code-127-in-matlab-r2022b-a#answer_1250714 .

Whever you install MATLAB on Linux, you need to watch out for conflicts between the libraries that MATLAB is using and the system libraries (that is, this is an issue that comes up much more often with Linux than with Windows or MacOS).

Much of the time the work-arounds involve removing something from a MATLAB installation directory... but when you upgrade Linux to a newer version, the system version of the item might be something different and you might need the MATLAB version back again. Or you might have to delete new things due to new conflicts that did not exist with the previous Linux...

[AJ]

But if I'm updgrading from a supported Ubuntu version to another supported Ubuntu version, there shouldn't be any need to uninstall and reinstall before/after the upgrade right?

[Walter Roberson]

Unfortunately, when it comes to Linux, "supported" does not always mean problem-free. At best it might mean that if you did a fresh install of the Linux version and installed only MATLAB and the exact gcc indicated for your release, that it might work -- but if you have installed other packages (as most people do) then it might not work smoothly.

[AJ]

So then you're saying I should just uninstall, upgrade, and then reinstall.

[Walter Roberson]

Upgrade linux first. Then test whether MATLAB + Simulink seem to work. If they do, you are done. If not, then uninstall / reinstall might be called for (possibly followed by fixes like changing where libC.so.6 is found.)