Soo, just a quick fix: If matlab crashed after upgrading your Arch Linux installation, then you might be experiencing an incompatibility between the version of the C++ support library (libstdc++.so) shipped with MATLAB and the one shipped with Arch Linux. Making MATLAB use the system version fixes this and is quite simple. You can read about ways to do that here and here . A litte bonus point: applying this fix will enable MATLAB to use your Graphics Accelerator for "advanced plot features", possibly enhancing its performance in that regard.