Matlab 2012b desktop - reactivating the old "retro style" desktop?

Question

This has the clear potential of ending up in a flame war, but anyway, I give it a try ... there is not any definitive answer out there (as yet).

On one of my machines, I literally was switched/upgraded to Matlab 2012b. It's a nice new pretty shiny desktop, ok. But I am very much used to the old crappy one, for a good number of reasons. Has anyone of you found a specific way (options, hacking config files, whatever) in order to regain the old Matlab desktop - primarily the old menus (file, edit, ...) and buttons of the editor window (the debugging stuff, like executing a cell)?

EDIT (1): The interface of the figure-window is still the same as before, with menus etc., no matter whether it is docked or not. That's interesting, there is still a part of the old desktop there ...

Answer 1

There are a lot of good comments suggesting alternatives to what you originally asked, but the direct answer to your question is no - as far as I'm aware, it's not possible to get the old desktop back.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what "old version" you want - you can start MATLAB in a very sparse manner using

matlab -nojvm -nodesktop

in both Windows and Linux. The -nojvm command disables a lot of things you probably want, so

matlab -nodesktop

Is probably the easiest middle ground, unless your JVM is giving you fits. Note: this is a really, really sparse UI. I think they used to call it "Cleve Mode" at the Mathworks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Moler)

But you probably want a newer version than what this gives you; what specific commands do you want? As others above have mentioned, executing a cell, for example, should never be done by point-and-click; its a great keyboard short-cut now - "ctrl-enter"; there's really no reason to be clicking around in the "ribbon" or "menus" anymore.