So to update my own inquiry - as far as I can make out theres no solution to this problem. Or at least, I havent been able to fix it.
I'm not the only person with this problem - theres an Ubuntu stackexchange thread with a suggested fix here <https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029163/how-to-get-scilab-6-0-1-working-on-ubuntu-18-04-lts/1029164> by N0rbert which might prove useful for other people with issues of simply getting Scilab to work, but does not solve my issue of ATOMS not updating or displaying an up to date package list. The HDF5 thing is a known issue and is on the bugtracker here thanks to N0rbert: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/scilab/+bug/1765503 I have to admit I have a hard time with believing that this issue has been allowed to persist for so long with the current most widespread linux distribution out there. Running an atomsInstall command doesnt work either: --> atomsInstall("coselica") Scanning repository http://atoms.scilab.org/6.0 ... Done at line 265 of function atomsDESCRIPTIONget ( /usr/share/scilab/modules/atoms/macros/atoms_internals/atomsDESCRIPTIONget.sci line 284 ) at line 31 of function atomsIsPackage ( /usr/share/scilab/modules/atoms/macros/atoms_internals/atomsIsPackage.sci line 47 ) at line 69 of function atomsInstallList ( /usr/share/scilab/modules/atoms/macros/atoms_internals/atomsInstallList.sci line 108 ) at line 233 of function atomsInstall ( /usr/share/scilab/modules/atoms/macros/atomsInstall.sci line 249 ) atomsDESCRIPTIONget: save ('/home/chris/.Scilab/scilab-6.0.1/.atoms/packages') has failed. I dont know if its significant or not, but in /usr/share/scilab/modules/atoms/etc/ , in the "repositories" text file, the url for the atoms repository for 6.0 (https://atoms.scilab.org/6.0/) returns a 443 forbidden error. Its late here but the next thing on my list to do tomorrow is to download the package zips manually and installing via atomsInstall('pathtozip'). -- Sent from: http://mailinglists.scilab.org/Scilab-users-Mailing-Lists-Archives-f2602246.html _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@lists.scilab.org http://lists.scilab.org/mailman/listinfo/users