Time to ditch Windows for AMD/Xilinx FPGA Development?

[zygot]

According to the release notes for Vitis/Vivado 2022.2, this is the last release for Win10 hosts. I haven't installed a new version of the tools since Vivis 2020.2 but have a potential need for platform support that only comes with the most recent tools.

Personally, my last version of Windows is going to be Win10 Version 21H1. Win11? No thanks. I'm just not willing to go on the ride that Microsoft wants to take me on. In theory, I can avoid having Microsoft install Win10 22H2 ( I've seen it and don't want its "feature update" ). In reality, if I want internet connectivity, meaning security updates, Microsoft is going to install 22H2 whether or not I want it along with any updates, because Microsoft see this as a terminal point for Win10 users that might make Win11 seem like a plausible "upgrade". In theory I can uninstall 22H2 ( I've done this for a laptop that required 3 attempts to "upgrade" ) but in practice, who knows what I have after doing all of this? I doubt that even Microsoft knows.

So, for me it's time to move on from Microsoft and its scheduled income conveyor belt.

I prefer Centos, but Xilinx isn't too explicit about what distributions of Centos 8.x it actually supports. Centos 7 is a possibility, though installing it on a new machine is almost impossible. I guess that I'll have to make friends with Ubuntu.

I'm posting this, not so much as a gripe, but as a warning. If you haven't been making plans for your FPGA development future.. the future is here. The reality is that if you want to do ZYNQ development and have access to all of its features, you need to do you software development for Linux platforms on a Linux host. Even if Microsoft is able to subsume Linux I don;lt see this changing in the near future. For a look at the future of Vitis you can investigate the Kria and Alveo support options and how hardware and user space software will unite. Everything that you did before will be depreciated in the near future. Be prepared.

Edited January 27, 2023 by zygot

[Tim S.]

Hi @zygot,

I've had great success running Vivado/Vitis hobbies on Ubuntu 22.10 on a https://hpdevone.com/. I understand that, officially, I should be using Ubuntu 22.04 instead. Your millage may vary.

Tim S.

 

[zygot]

I've also "bent" the rules as far as installing FPGA tools on "unsupported" OS hosts. I've done this on a few embedded SBCs where I want to do design work on the target. Once you get into the nitty-gritty of ZYNQ Linux application development, this is where you can run into problems, that can usually be resolved... with some concerted effort. I'd never try an install a full Vivits development system on an embedded OS.

I realize that there are many people who don't have a problem with migrating to Win11 and will have no interest in this post. I do suppose that I'm not the only person who is tired of the Windows train ride; I think we all know where the track is headed.

Let's face it, Windows, even if you consider it to be a legitimate OS, isn't friendly or supportive as an engineering host platform. I have gotten used to using some great Windows applications that help with logic design such good code editors, text diff and merge tools etc that don't work on Linux.

The reality is that those old Win7, WIn10 boxes with their outdated FPGA tool installations never go away as some things can't be done as well with the newer tools and OS releases. At some point the gap between tool version and OS version is too great to function well enough to get your work done in a reasonable manner.

Progress, forward or backward, usually a mixture of those, will always exist and figuring out how to deal with it will always be a problem to work on. Working on pooled information will help with making good decisions when dealing woth that. Edited January 28, 2023 by zygot