@Thomas Richard Hmm, well the mysteries contunue. But good news!

maple is working without problems (no screen corruption) if I start it from the Applications menu.

I created /usr/share/applications/maple2016.desktop which contains:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Maple 2016
Type=Application
Comment=Maple 2016
Exec=/opt/maple2016/bin/xmaple -nosplash
Terminal=false
Icon=/opt/maple2016/bin/Maple2016.png
GenericName=Maple
Categories=Applications;Education;Mathematics;
MimeType=application/x-maple-worksheet;

@Thomas Richard Thanks for our help!

That works, almost.

maple now starts and seems to be usable.

However, there's a lot of screen corruption which can be fixed by opening menus etc around the corrupted areas.

I'll get some of my users to use it and hopefully it does not die with a fatal exception.

There are a lot of java exceptions in the console that look to be about screen updating. A sample:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.ClassCastException: sun.awt.image.BufImgSurfaceData cannot be cast to sun.java2d.xr.XRSurfaceData
    at sun.java2d.xr.XRPMBlitLoops.cacheToTmpSurface(XRPMBlitLoops.java:145)
    at sun.java2d.xr.XrSwToPMBlit.Blit(XRPMBlitLoops.java:353)
    at sun.java2d.SurfaceDataProxy.updateSurfaceData(SurfaceDataProxy.java:498)
    at sun.java2d.SurfaceDataProxy.replaceData(SurfaceDataProxy.java:455)
    at sun.java2d.SurfaceData.getSourceSurfaceData(SurfaceData.java:233)
    at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.renderImageCopy(DrawImage.java:566)
    at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(DrawImage.java:67)
    at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(DrawImage.java:1014)
    at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(SunGraphics2D.java:3318)
    at sun.awt.image.ImageRepresentation.drawToBufImage(ImageRepresentation.java:813)
    at sun.java2d.pipe.DrawImage.copyImage(DrawImage.java:1021)
    at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(SunGraphics2D.java:3318)
    at sun.java2d.SunGraphics2D.drawImage(SunGraphics2D.java:3296)
    at javax.swing.ImageIcon.paintIcon(ImageIcon.java:425)
    at com.maplesoft.mathdoc.platform.WmiRolloverHighlightButtonUI.paintContents(Unknown Source)
    at com.maplesoft.mathdoc.platform.WmiRolloverHighlightButtonUI.paint(Unknown Source)
    at javax.swing.plaf.ComponentUI.update(ComponentUI.java:161)

Thanks Thomas for your suggestion about X11 perfomance. The java options mentioned in the FAQ are already enabled in the xmaple startup script.

Getting maple to run in x2go should not be that far off. matlab as well as many other programs run without problems.

The error message suggests that the problem is actually in the splash screen setup.

Is there a way of disabling the initial startup splash screen?