ECSE 2610 Studio 0 - Xilinx Vivado 16.2 Design Suite Installation on Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Linux)

Before Start

In ECSE 2610 - Computer Components and Operations, we had been asked to install Xilinx Vivado 16.2 Design Suite as a part of Studio 0 assignment.

As there are no official guides on how to install Vivado for Linux users, I am going to show you how I installed that.

You will need

• Around 30GB free space and 7.43GB of them will be taken at the end
• Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS, Other Linux OS can be used but may need extra work

Dependencies

To install libncurses5 we need to add deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main universe into APT.

1
2

sudo su
echo "deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-focal-sources.list

or using Software & Update to add this source

click Add, and type in deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main universe.

Then, update index and install dependencies

1
2

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y libncurses5 libcanberra-gtk-module

Check if dependency installed correctly

1

ldconfig -p | grep libncurses.so.5

You should get something like this

1

libncurses.so.5 (libc6,x86-64) => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5

Preparing

First, you need to get from the AMD website or use my downloaded achieve. To do that, go to a path that is free enough and run

1
2
3

cd ~
sudo apt install -y wget
wget https://minio-lv-a.jamesflare.com/public/application/Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1.tar.gz

Check the MD5 sum value, it should equal to 0e41f991e5d89410ad5ed6d30407f379

1

md5sum Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1.tar.gz

If not, the file may be damaged. Then, unzip the achieve file.

1

tar -xvzf Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1.tar.gz

Then, go into the decompressed folder

1

cd Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1

This is how it look like

1
2
3
4

james@Desktop:~$ cd Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1
james@Desktop:~/Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1$ ls
bin   lib           msvcr110.dll  scripts  vccorlib110.dll  xsetup.exe
data  msvcp110.dll  payload       tps      xsetup

Installing

The xsetup in Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2016.2_0605_1 folder is the installer for Linux. To run it, we can execute it in terminal

1

./xsetup

Sometime, it went wrong. Like xsetup is not executable or permission denied. Try

1

chmod +x xsetup

Click Continue to skip the newer version. And it will gives you a welcome page with supported system information.

Ubuntu 24.04.1 is not in the list but it’s fine. Click Next.

Agree all there argument by ticking check boxes, then click Next.

Vivado HL is now under free liense. So, just pick Vivado HL WebPACK. Then, click Next.

HL WebPACK no longer needs a FLEX license file!

Xilinx / AMD Downloads

Select the parts you need for your project. ECSE 2610 uses Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board, so I just checked Artix-7. Then, click Next.

We need chose a path to install Vivado 2016.2, /opt/Xilinx shows red is because non root user can not write there. You can change it to your user home directory. I will use /home/james/Xilinx where james is my user name.

Create the path as it asked. Then, click Next.

Check the summary and click Next.

The installation progress will begin. Sometime, it will gives an error on accessing remote resources. This is due to redirection from Xilinx to AMD. Click OK to ignore the warning.

Then, we are done.

Checking

Then, you can open Vivado 2016.2 though desktop shortcuts.

Uninstall

If you want uninstall Vivado 2016.2, you can use the builtin uninstalling shortcuts. Or removing the installing directory. For example

1

rm -rf /home/james/Xilinx

Then, clean the shortcuts in /home/james/.local/share/applications. james is my user name, change it to your own.

Troubleshooting

If you got an error, you may check the log under the installing path, for example

1

cat /home/james/.Xilinx/xinstall/xinstall_1736407656194.log

The path of log will be shown as long as you started installing with ./xsetup. If you still can’t fix the issue, you can comment me with logs for a check.

Vivado Installation Got Stuck Says, “Generating installed devices list”

Based on the discussing on Vivado installation got stuck says, “Generating installed devices list” and some more information. It’s due to lack of libncurses5 package. And Ubuntu 24.04.1 doesn’t contain it, since it’s an old package. You need to install it manually.

One possible solution

1
2
3

sudo echo "deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-focal-sources.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y libncurses5