Simulink welcome page doesn't open on Linux

I just updated to Fedora 26 and I am still running matlab from the command line. When I type

simulink

the introduction window to simulink does not appear, but instead the warning

Warning: Unable to start MATLABWindow process 
In sltemplate.ui.StartPage/showStartPageFallback
In sltemplate.ui.StartPage.show
In simulink (line 40)

is issued. I found this question and tried the proposed commands which gives

./MATLABWindow: symbol lookup error: /lib64/libharfbuzz.so.0: undefined symbol: FT_Get_Var_Blend_Coordinates

for me. Selinux and libsepol are both installed. Similar to other findings on the web I can open simulink by opening the desktop and there directly open my simulink model. So only the welcome page is broken. Any help much appreciated!

Answer 1

[Talha]

Hello, i think this problem is about freetype library, you can remove the MATLAB's own freetype libraries and create a symbolic link from your lib64 folder.

In your MATLAB directory,

/usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/glnxa64/

Delete libfreetype.so.6 and libfreetype.so.6.11.1 after backing up these files,

than create a symbolic link with the following commands,

 ln -s /usr/lib64/libfreetype.so.6 /usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/glnxa64/libfreetype.so.6
 ln -s /usr/lib64/libfreetype.so.6.13.0 /usr/local/MATLAB/R2017a/bin/glnxa64/libfreetype.so.6.13.0

[Michael Schwegel]

You are ingenious! Since I still use MatR2016a, and I only found libfreetype.so.6 and 6.11 in my matlab path I tried symlinking just this one - and as predicted works like a charm! Thanks very much!