How can I launch MATLAB 2012?

I have a problem with the MATLAB 2012 installation.

After having installed it using Alt + F2 and having used gksudo nautilus, I have installed MATLAB in the correct folder, /usr/local/MATLAB/R2012a.

Then I inserted the license and the window told "activation complete" or something like that.

This made me happy, but only for a while because as soon as I try to search for MATLAB within the applications I cannot find it and neither if I try to run

matlab

into terminal it says:

command not found

How can I fix this problem?

Try navigating to bin folder in your Matlab installation directory:

cd /usr/local/MATLAB/R2012a/bin

Then execute Matlab from there:

./matlab

Source: How do I launch MATLAB on Linux?

If that worked for you, you can create alias:

cd /usr/local/bin/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/MATLAB/R2012a/bin/matlab matlab

This trick will allow you to launch matlab from any directory, as you were trying to do. Note that you should use sudo for the last command, since it creates alias globally, for all users.

If you are not in sudoers list (i.e. you cannot use sudo command), you can create alias locally. To do that, open .bashrc file, which is in your home directory:

gedit ~/.bashrc

Add the following line to the end of that file:

alias matlab="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2012a/bin/matlab"

Finally, reopen your terminal, or type source ~/.bashrc and execute this command.

Source: How do I create shortcuts, aliases, or links to MATLAB?

I've just installed Matlab 2012b on Ubuntu 12.10 and followed up by installing the matlab-support package in the Ubuntu Software Centre:

sudo apt-get install matlab-support

(As per this answer in a related question: https://askubuntu.com/a/140078/16835)