How to get Scilab 6.1.0 working on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS?

Question

I have installed clean Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS and installed Scilab from repository here with

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install scilab

After installation I tried to launch it from GUI (Applications → Other → Scilab) - it does not start.
Then I tried to launch it from terminal with scilab command. Terminal output is as follows:

$ scilab
...
Scilab cannot create Scilab Java Main-Class (we have not been able to find the main Scilab class. Check if the Scilab and thirdparty packages are available).

so it can't find Java again. I reported bug 1870813 about this problem. But as usual there is no reaction from package maintainers.

What should I do to get Scilab 6.1.0 working on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS?

Solution 1

It is known that Scilab is working normally in the Ubuntu 20.10, so one can download packages from it and install into the 20.04 LTS system:

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/scilab
cd ~/Downloads/scilab

wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-cli_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-data_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-doc-fr_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-doc-ja_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-doc-pt-br_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-doc_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-full-bin_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_amd64.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-include_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_amd64.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-minimal-bin_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_amd64.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab-test_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scilab/scilab_6.1.0+dfsg1-6build2_all.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/h/hdf5/libhdf5-103-1_1.10.6+repack-2_amd64.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/h/hdf5/libhdf5-hl-100_1.10.6+repack-2_amd64.deb
wget -c http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libm/libmatio/libmatio9_1.5.17-5_amd64.deb

sudo apt-get install ./lib*.deb
sudo apt-get install ./scilab*.deb

---

But anyway it is strange method, and the Scilab packages should be fixed on the repository level by its maintainers.

Solution 2

Scilab package for Ubuntu 20.04 seems to be broken, but you can always directly run it from the source.

1. Download scilab from scilab website

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://www.scilab.org/download/6.1.0/scilab-6.1.0.bin.linux-x86_64.tar.gz

2. extract the archive

tar xf scilab-6.1.0.bin.linux-x86_64.tar.gz

3. run the file

./scilab-6.1.0/bin/scilab

Note: If you get following error:

error while loading shared libraries: libscilab-cli.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

run this command, taken from here

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5

Comments

[Yasha Karant]

@karel I tried the above tar.gz download, but it did not seem to work on Ubuntu 20.04.1 current (14 Oct 2020) for the Scilab GUI. Wait. It takes quite a while for the Scilab GUI to appear on your desktop (using an electromechanical laptop harddrive, not a SSD, Intel I7 CPU, 16 GByte RAM). Once it works, one can add (at least in MATE GUI) this scilab to the application pulldown menu, or to the desktop.