Linux Support

A couple of things I have noticed:

  1. It seems that many files are missing in the Linux distro when compared with the Windows files.

  2. Also looks like the firmware upgrade option is unavailable on the Linux version of FrontPanel 3.0.

  3. It would seem that if you are using wxWidgets for the FrontPanel GUI you should make this open source and allow others to help out with the updates. You shouldn’t have anything to hide in this area.

  4. The Sample files using wxWidgets are out of date and will no longer build on a standard Linux distro. The newer libraries seem to have a wrapper around chars in order to fit their new classes.

Thanks,
Ryan

Since Linux supports Xilinx ISE, most of the files should be there. Was there anything specific that you thought should be there and wasn’t?

Yes, at the moment the firmware update is unavailable in Linux. Linux USB support is not as reliable as Windows USB support (in our experience). The USB device we use does not have very good failure recovery for a bad firmware. Therefore, we decided to leave it out of the Linux version. It is also currently left out of the Mac version, too, but we now use the native Mac USB handling, so we have much more confidence there. And the hardware/driver is much less a moving target as it is on Linux.

You’re certainly allowed to have your opinion on what people should do with their hard work. We have chosen not to open the source at this time.

Which distro are you using? We officially support FC5.

I was looking for a user constraint file for the new FrontPanel-3 library. In the Windows distro you offer a template file. It looks like it has been accidentally left out. The current user manuals do not reflect these changes either so I didn’t know where to start. In the end I downloaded the windows zip and got what I needed.

I prefer the Linux Gentoo distro but they should all work equally well with your choice of packaging. I was able to find a Windows machine and upgrade my firmware so no big deal here either; just asking.

Thanks for the response,
Ryan