I do not know how similar openSUSE is to ubuntu. I recently went through something similar with ubuntu, and found resources such as http://askubuntu.com/questions/401948/how-to-create-launcher-icon
But I didn't actually use the icon files and so on. I created a shell script using hints from http://askubuntu.com/questions/299052/how-to-execute-sh-script-from-a-desktop-shortcut and others. There were two important parts: 1) convince the launcher to Run executables instead of edit them; and 2) on the end of the matlab command line add the -desktop option
I would have to fire up my virtual ubuntu machine to find the exact script I used, but I am running a job at the moment and so I am short on memory.
