Universal BlueUB
Universal Blue•2y ago
Oddr

Mathematica via distrobox?

First time using distrobox. I have a license to Mathematica and am trying to install it on Bazzite. It works fine on my MacBook.

Since there is no flatpak, I created a distrobox: 

[host]
$ distrobox create --image fedora:40 --name mathematica --nvidia


Entering the distrobox, I installed Mathematica to its default locations in /usr/local/bin/:

[distrobox]
$ sudo sh Downloads/Mathematica_14.0.0_BNDL_LINUX.sh


I then exported one of the symlinked entries in /usr/local/bin:

[distrobox]
$ distrobox-export --app /usr/local/bin/mathematica
Error: cannot find any desktop files.
Error: trying to export a non-installed application.

$ distrobox-export --bin /usr/local/bin/mathematica
/usr/local/bin/mathematica from mathematica exported successfully in /home/kfarmer/.local/bin.
OK!


But neither from the host OS nor from within the distrobox am I able to run it:

[host or distrobox]
$ mathematica
/usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/14.0/SystemFiles/FrontEnd/Binaries/Linux-x86-64/Mathematica: error while loading shared libraries: libfreetype.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


I've not installed mathematica except on MacOS and Windows, so I don't know if this is expected: Do I need to install other bits (which would seem odd for Wolfram to leave out in their installer)? or am I running into an issue in Fedora (also seems highly unlikely)?

I note that nixpkgs has an entry for Mathematica 14.0. If I can't get it working here, then I'll probably end up switching to NixOS to gain access to that packager tonight when I blow away the system drive while migrating my mobo to full UEFI. Regardless, knowing whether/if I missed something above would be helpful.
Was this page helpful?