MATLAB failing to find hardware OpenGL

Here's a few things I know:

• I have a Intel® Core™ i5-5200U CPU @ 2.20GHz
• I'm running on Linux Mint
• My version of MATLAB is R2015b
• The output from "glxinfo | grep rende" indicates I have hardware support for OpenGL(posted below):

direct rendering: Yes
  GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, 
  GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, 
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Broadwell 
  GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp, GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil, 
  GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp,

Looks good, right? Well, when I start up MATLAB and run "opengl info", this is what I get:

MATLAB has experienced a low-level graphics error, and may not have drawn correctly.
Read about what you can do to prevent this issue at Resolving Low-Level Graphics Issues then restart MATLAB.
To share details of this issue with MathWorks technical support,
please include this file with your service request.
                        Version: ''
                         Vendor: ''
                       Renderer: 'None'
          RendererDriverVersion: ''
      RendererDriverReleaseDate: ''
                 MaxTextureSize: 0
                         Visual: ''
                       Software: 1
           HardwareSupportLevel: 'none'
      SupportsGraphicsSmoothing: 0
  SupportsDepthPeelTransparency: 0
     SupportsAlignVertexCenters: 0
                     Extensions: {}
             MaxFrameBufferSize: 0

Uhhhh...that looks like sort of a problem. Running "opengl hardwarebasic", then "opengl info" gives the exact same result back.

So, I tried opening MATLAB with the -softwareopengl flag. Now, "opengl info" give this:

                          Version: '2.1 Mesa 7.2'
                           Vendor: 'Brian Paul'
                         Renderer: 'Mesa X11'
                   MaxTextureSize: 2048
                           Visual: 'Visual 0x5f, (RGBA 32 b…'
                         Software: 'true'
             HardwareSupportLevel: 'none'
        SupportsGraphicsSmoothing: 0
    SupportsDepthPeelTransparency: 1
       SupportsAlignVertexCenters: 0
                       Extensions: {114x1 cell}
               MaxFrameBufferSize: 4096

Well, that's certainly better! At least it's something...

My question is: why is MATLAB failing to see and use the hardware? Is there anything I can do to get MATLAB to play nice?

One other thing (which may or may not be related) I've encountered recently has to deal with displaying images. I read an image using imread no problem. If I view the image using imshow, it looks perfect. However, if I view the image using image or imagesc, the curves on the image (it's a black and white image of Saturn) become very jagged, and the image loses a notable amount of detail. Is this a result of software OpenGL?

[Walter Roberson]

Other people have reported similar problems; see http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/241374-libgl-error-persists-and-i-ve-tried-everything and http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/239279-hardware-based-opengl-on-linux

Answer 1

[riyas a]

Its OPENGL and libstdc++ issue

First, install a few packages

    $ sudo apt-get install lib64stdc++6:i386

    $ sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

Then update some links:

    cd <your_matlab_location>/sys/os/glnxa64/
    $ sudo mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
    $ sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6  libstdc++.so.6

then run matlab check whether mesa is updated in matlab terminal

    >> opengl info

      Version: '3.0 Mesa 17.0.3'
       Vendor: 'Intel Open Source Technology Center' ..............

     HardwareSupportLevel: 'full'
    ..........

Now opengl should be working....

[Markus Nölle]

Solution worked well for Matlab R2017a running on Ubuntu 17.04.

The only difference is the location of libstdc++.so.6. So the last terminal command is

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6

[David Grenier]

Solution worked well for Matlab R2021a running on Debian 11.

[Brandon Caasenbrood]

Thanks a thousand, worked like a charm for me on pop-os 21.04 - AMD Ryzen 7 5800h with Radeon Graphics.

[Uzair Iqbal]

Thanks a ton @riyas a. Finally, it solved the issue.

[Vincenzo Brancaccio]

Amazing! It finally solved it, thanks!

[Lasse]

thank you sooo much!! I dont know what I did with those lines or why they were necessary but my 3d graphic runs with more than 1fps now