java + compiz fusion

30. April 2008 by emeris.

I work primarily in matlab(2007b 64bit) on a group computational server, hence my main mode of access to the server is through ssh with X forwarding. The problem is that on my laptop I am running the ubuntu 8.04 (32bit) with the compiz eye candy turned on and the java jre does not get along with compiz (from what I gather it has to do with something about repainting frames and swing waiting for the window manager to do that, but compiz never does this so java based programs sit there with grey screens forever, this is a bug in the JRE not a bug in linux and has been fixed in newer releases). The simple solution would be to turn off the eye candy, but some of it does in fact add to productivity (particularly when going from matlab window <-> emacs for code <-> firefox for matlab documentation given the limited desktop space on a laptop screen some of the window manager features are very nice) so after poking around for a bit I found this:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1003847#post1003847

The summary is that matlab (version 2007b) uses java1.6.0, but installing java1.6.0u6 (java 6 update 6 (the forum claims that update 5 also works which is a claim I saw else where)) and the running
$export MATLAB_JAVA=(location of java1.6.0_6)

everything works wonderfully.  This needs to be done on the computational server as that is the jre that is running matlab, not my local version.

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