Desktop link Linux stops after splash screen

I have been using Matlab for the better part of a year on an openSUSE system - currently I'm on 2016a.

I usually run the 'matlab &' command in a terminal to launch Matlab, but then I have this useless terminal open and I want to just open it using an icon. I have created icons in the past for other applications, but for some reason Matlab is different. Is there some reason why Matlab stops opening at the splash screen?

Matlab was installed using symbolic links, and I use the full path in the application destination.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

I do not know how similar openSUSE is to ubuntu. I recently went through something similar with ubuntu, and found resources such as http://askubuntu.com/questions/401948/how-to-create-launcher-icon

But I didn't actually use the icon files and so on. I created a shell script using hints from http://askubuntu.com/questions/299052/how-to-execute-sh-script-from-a-desktop-shortcut and others. There were two important parts: 1) convince the launcher to Run executables instead of edit them; and 2) on the end of the matlab command line add the -desktop option

I would have to fire up my virtual ubuntu machine to find the exact script I used, but I am running a job at the moment and so I am short on memory.

[Chris Coutinho]

Adding the '-desktop' option to the command seems to have solved the problem, thanks for your input!

[Aljoscha Peter Lepping]

Just stumbled over the same problem. In my case, '-desktop' also did the trick. Thank you!

[Mason]

6 years later and that still worked. what does that flag even do?