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Linux OS for FPGA worth

I keep debating if I should start switching my PCs from Windows 10 to Linux, several of my main PCs are on Win 10 Preview, and Microsoft made it so you can't get off until the next non-preview release.

I play around with Lattice, and Xilinx FPGAs, I know Lattice has their Diamond software available for Linux, and Xilinx has Vivado and it's older software also available for Linux also, but I've read that it's difficult to get them to work with Linux.

I use Mint Linux X64 a derivative of Ubuntu, so anyone out there has used with with either of that software and how difficult was it to get it working?

Thanks

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Cecil - k5nwa
Reply to
Cecil Bayona
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Vivado on Xubuntu was trivial to install and get working. Personally I would expect it to be more difficult to get it working on Windows, but the manufacturer should have sorted that out.

If in doubt, download it and install it in a virtual machine image. There's even an argument that should be done for the work environment, particularly if you might need to revisit a design later.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Are you speaking of using a virtual PC for the development?

Under Windows 10 I also setup two Virtual CPUs running Win 7 i386 and X64 because some of the software development tools would not work with Windows 10 and some had issues with X64. I was a little slower but not by much mostly because the Diamond software had less RAM under the 32 bit Virtual PC but it was good enough. An advantage was I could copy the VM to any other PC I desired with little effort, and it was easy to keep a backup of the entire system. I used vmWare and had little difficulty having the VM talk to the FPGA board.

Right now I mostly use the Win 7 X64 VM most of the time with few issues rather than use Windows 10 where I have more problems than Windows 7. I supposed it might be better if I took one of my Window 10 CPUs, image it, then restore Window 7 and run that natively but I like to give Linux a shot at it since my machines that have Mint Linux just work and rarely have any problems like Windows does.

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Cecil - k5nwa
Reply to
Cecil Bayona

That's the argument. There are pros and cons, of course.

Why am I not surprised! That illustrates a pro of the VM approach.

On the rare occasions when I need Windows, I run XP in a VM. I have both fully patched and from-the-CD images, and clone them when experimenting.

I have no plans to buy Win10; I don't think I'm clever enough to keep it secure.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

The oldest Xilinx Ise versions (10.1) won't run on a 64-bit Linux environment without more tweaking than I'm willing to invest. The later versions 13.x 14.x seem to work fine on a 64-bit Ubuntu 12 system.

The download pods can be tricky to get running right. Xilinx's own pod seems to be easy, the Digilent pod took a bit more effort.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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