FreeMat has been installed but can not start, no icon seen

After apt install the FreeMat package, no icon appeared. No way to start the software. My system is Ubuntu, the file is dot.rpm file.

Solution 1:

FreeMat is packaged for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, it has necessary desktop-file in the package.

To correctly install the application on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install freemat

For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (and really newer) there is a problem - this version does not ship Qt4 in the repositories. So we need to use special third-party PPA to get it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rock-core/qt4
sudo apt-get update

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/libf/libffi/libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat_4.2+dfsg1-6_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat-data_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat-help_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb

sudo apt-get install ./libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb ./freemat_4.2+dfsg1-6_amd64.deb ./freemat-data_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb ./freemat-help_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb

The above method may be adapted for Ubuntu 21.04 using commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rock-core/qt4
sudo sed -i "s/hirsute/focal/g" /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rock-core-ubuntu-qt4-hirsute.list
sudo apt-get update

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/libf/libffi/libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat_4.2+dfsg1-6_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat-data_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freemat/freemat-help_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb

sudo apt-get install ./libffi6_3.2.1-8_amd64.deb ./freemat_4.2+dfsg1-6_amd64.deb ./freemat-data_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb ./freemat-help_4.2+dfsg1-6_all.deb