LabVIEW and Linux Review

[swatts]

Hello to all you LabVIEW on Linux Curious,

For me 2024 was the year I tried to get to grips with Linux. I think it's been a success, we have delivered 2 projects based on small single board platforms running OpenSUSE and they went very well. But there are things to consider when making the move from Windows.

It is definitely worth the effort, adding some Linux capabilities to your toolbox will pay dividends.

General Linux Comments

Even tho' Windows is paid for it seems to always be wanting to up-sell and advertise, this really gets on my nerves. Whereas Linux feels like a quiet and purposeful place. But there are frustrations!

There are desktops that work in a similar way to Windows and distros often come with a selection of different desktops.

Permissions are everything, by default Linux thinks you are an idiot and can't be trusted with anything.. This includes file locations and hardware resources.. Often this will show up as odd behaviour, rather than error messages that clearly tell you something is going wrong.

VISA works nice when permissions are set correctly, this gives you access to all sorts of instrumentation. Ethernet works fine too (UDP,TCP). Talking to shared libraries is pretty good too, I noticed no real issues connected to an .SO library compared to a .DLL in windows.

If using USB to UART convertors I would use the FTDI chipset, works without extra drivers etc.

I use nomachine to remote into my Linux machines, mostly works really well.

My testing was essentially to use the installed distro until I ran into issues, when I ran into issues I gave up I don't have the time or inclination to battle with an install. The joy of Linux is that installing a new OS is only about 10 minutes of effort (most of which is background).

There are some issues and ugliness with LabVIEW, don't expect the same experience as Windows. Hopefully new users will generate new feedback and this will improve. Main one is DON'T use the scroll bar to navigate, it buffers and buffers and buffers. I noticed some old-fashioned handling of 2D arrays on the front panel, will be doing some investigation on this. The Sound VIs don't seem to work at all (Sound in Linux is a nightmare).

Review of Versions

Starting off with the versions I found to be most robust and easy to use.

OpenSUSE

Tumbleweed is the rolling release - https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/#download 

Leap is the stable release - https://get.opensuse.org/leap/15.6/ 

This is the distro we have used at SSDC to build professional systems using the LattePanda boards. It has worked very well.

Stand-out features are that you can install LabVIEW and drivers using the Yast GUI only, so no command line. The other is that you can still log in as root (Ubuntu uses "sudo" commands for root access). This makes life a little easier for programmers new to Linux permissions. When you run into issues, login as root. If the issues go away, you know it is a permissions issue. I used this a lot at the start!

I always end up back on this distro and even tho' the default desktop settings are strange to a Windows user they can be changed. 

Debian

https://www.debian.org/

The feeling I got from Debian was solidity, it just feels well put together and not flashy. Which makes it an excellent platform for LabVIEW work.

Video can be found here - https://youtu.be/or568jGSV50 

Ubuntu

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Install is nice, but slow. Ubuntu-Cinnamon 24.04 is beautiful IMO and not annoyingly different to Windows for navigation. There seems to be more support for Ubuntu (I think it is favoured in the US).

Norm Kirchner and I have observed issues with it breaking (my assumption is that it is a power saving issue, but this is something we have only recently observed)

Video - https://youtu.be/UHjBMFGB-7M

Video - https://youtu.be/CXYGtna3yXM

LuBuntu, XuBuntu

https://lubuntu.me/

https://xubuntu.org/

These are lightweight versions of Linux and use desktops based on xfce (Xubuntu) and LXQt (Lubuntu), this makes them attractive for small platforms and complete distro distribution (like CTI). I observed some User-interface issues with buttons on the front-panel on one of these, so need to investigate them more in 2025.

They are definitely the way to go for CTI as they are about 4Gb to distribute, rather than 8Gb for OpenSUSE. They should also give some performance improvements on small SBCs.

Zorin OS

https://zorin.com/os/download/17/core/

I really like Zorin OS, the windows can be made all wobbly and it's very pretty and amusing to use. I did have some issues with it, in that the windows navigation behaved strangely when minimising LabVIEW windows. But I did an update and it all looks and feels good now. This would definitely be my daily driver as it is just nice to use... Will carry on testing...

It's based on Ubuntu so support should be good.

Linux Mint

I was quite interested in this one, but I couldn't get LabVIEW to install. Which made me sad.

Fedora

This one didn't install LabVIEW either, just chucked up lots of errors that I couldn't be bothered to investigate.

Rocky

This one didn't install LabVIEW either, just chucked up lots of errors that I couldn't be bothered to investigate.

What's left to do?

RHEL (Red Hat Linux), AlmaLinux OS

Annoyingly Red Hat have a load of license based barriers to installation, which is one of my main motivations for leaving the Microsoft world, apparently AlmaLinux is the free alternative. Because I ran into issues with Rocky I gave up on this family.

My customers seem to want RHEL, so I guess I will have to do the hard work in 2025.

Lubuntu and Xubuntu

These distros are definitely worth more work from me. Georgios Tsalavoutis has built a distro for CTI at 4Gb and that's really worth progressing with.

I'm going to start talking about a dedicated LabVIEW Distro - and start a list of hardware that has been tested against this. If NI are not interested in running with it I might see if we can do it from the CTI. The whole experience will be a lot easier if you can just download an ISO and install it on a target without having to go through the rigmarole of testing that I have. In conclusion the barrier to entry is still too high for many.

Finally, I failed in my objective to get something running headless, but have been offered help and am content that it is possible. My new objective for 2025.

Talking of which

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[Dhakkan]

This is great! Steve.

My limited experience with distro-hopping led to similar outcomes!

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is the primary driver in all the desktops of my household.

OpenSUSE MicroOS is our home server OS. This is an atomic (immutable) flavor that I've successfully used to deploy containerized apps. I wonder if a production-grade setup can be done with LabVIEW on the desktop variant of this OS. I would be happy to explore this aspect, if there is interest.

For educational purposes, my son and I have installed Zorin's Education flavor quite successfully. Users (undergraduate students) have not reported any issues with it.

Happy New Year to one and all!

[swatts]

That's some excellent vindication matey, I really appreciate knowing that.

It'll be interesting to see what another year of experience brings..

Many thanks 

[AustinManinTown]

You and Norm are not the only ones to have issues with Ubuntu. Canonical 'upgraded' the kernel mid-LTS release, which stopped drivers compiling (DKMS) into the kernel.

While it is not officially supported by NI, CentOS is a (very) good alternative to Red Hat. LabVIEW and the drivers work. It has a decent UI and gets updates. I will say that the online support for RH is excellent. That is itself may be worth the license fee. 

As for LabVIEW, there is a KnowledgeBase article that highlights the differences between Windows and Linux:

What Are the Differences Between LabVIEW for Windows and Linux Operating Systems? - NI

Anyone moving from Windows to Linux is going to have a learning curve. A lot of the issues people run into are Linux issues (e.g. file permissions) that you do not see in Windows. It is very easy to knock Windows OS, but it does a lot of handholding for you. 

[ManuelSebald]

Hi Steve,

thanks for this great overview. Here are my 2 cents as a Linux user for many years.

First of all, it's great to see that more and more people start using Linux and are even able to deliver Linux based systems to their customers. I only here complains about Windows, but nobody dares to take the step to change.

Your comment about permissions: I'm sure the Linux developers don't think the users are idiots. Linux is just designed with a security first approach, and Windows is designed from the other direction, security last (at least in my perception 😉 ). What's more important these days?

Red Hat and licensing: For developers, they offer the free (no costs) "Developer membership" (https://developers.redhat.com/). With this membership you get access to all RedHat products, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a ton of very good documentation.

Because RHEL is on top of the officially supported distributions for LabVIEW I would go with this, followed by Ubuntu (not necessarily with Gnome desktop) and (equally) OpenSUSE Leap. One of the biggest advantages of these distros is the very long support with security updates. For RHEL it's 7 years (10 years extended support), 5 years for Ubuntu LTS and I think 90 months for OpenSUSE Leap. Normal desktop distributions usually have support for only one or two years (e.g. only 9 months for the none LTS Ubuntu versions). That's definitely an aspect one should consider for a production system (not so much for dev).

Greetings

Manu

[Craig_Petersen]

Been a linux user for 25+ years, but new to getting NI software packages up and running on this platform. Currently I have two Linux Mint (21.1) boxes running NI software. I also tested the software on SuSE 15.4 and had no real issues there either. I have one HP 8300, I was able to install NI I/O Trace, NI VISA-Interactive and Labview. Its replacement is now a HP Z840, also running Linux Mint. But there is one notable difference between these machines and my Windows ATE machine, where is the GPIB analyzer?

I use this software package quite frequently on my Windows box and would like to have this package on my Linux box. Is it hiding in another software package or is it simply not available.

Best Regards,

Craig Petersen.

[swatts]

Hi Craig,

Sounds like you should be telling me, (I couldn't get LabVIEW to go on Linux Mint)

I wouldn't be surprised if the GPIB team at NI is VERY small now, but I have not done anything on that interface for many years.

My guess is that it is not available. (I don't work for NI, if you're wondering why I'm being vague)

You have inspired me to look at Linux Mint again.

All the best

[Craig_Petersen]

Thanks for the response Steve, with some trial and error I have been able to get the NI drivers and Labview installed on my Linux box. The target machine is a HP Z840 44 core Xeon, 256GB RAM and 2.5TB storage, running of course Linux Mint 21.1. Once I installed the 6 repositories I first installed 488.2, in-visa interactive control, ni-visa. Once I confirmed the installs I tested NI Interactive to make sure it found the card and could communicate with the selected instrument. After that I installed the Labview community version. So far, everything works. 

I downloaded a driver for my HP 34401A, tinkered around to figure how the software worked and was able to take readings. This is my first experience with this development environment, but I think I will catch on pretty well. 

Best Regards,

Craig Petersen.

[softball]

Hi

I read the initial impressions of installing LabVIEW on various Linux distributions with great interest. Impressive work.

My experience installing LabVIEW is mixed.

Next after the very basic 'does it install at all', followed by 'does it run reliable' comes the question does it look good ?

OpenSUSE Leap installs and run, but it looks awful. A mess of varying fonts used in general and in LabVIEW text is not height centered properly. That is of course only an aesthetic issue and for users usually preferring a command line, probably a non-issue. But for me it is a show-stopper.

Xubuntu is better. The OS itself looks nice, but the font offset in LabVIEW is still a problem. And LabVIEW menus generally looks 'clonky'.

With that rant said, do you know a version of Linux that 'looks good' with LabVIEW ?

Regards

PS : LabVIEW on Windows looks good, and the macOS version looks very good.

PPS : I think I have seen that there is a solution to fixing the font height offset issue, but AI have not yet helped me find what to change to fix the issue.

[swatts]

Hi Softball,

The more I use Lubuntu, the more I like it. You can download our CTI virtual machine - https://gcentral.org/cti/

I think it looks OK. So you could check the settings we use on that.

I definitely think NI misses a trick by not bringing out a custom distro....

That would fix many support issues I think.

All the best

[softball]

Hi Steve

Thanks for the super quick response.

I like Lubuntu too. Xubuntu or Lubuntu is a toss-up.

I have now tried the Virtual Image. That is a nice installation experience.

But I don't like the font offset issue :

It is related to LabVIEW on Linux. Honestly, it looks like non-finished work. It has been so for years. And NI doesn't care to fix it. 

As a free software demo it is fine. But for anything serious ( yes, I know the licensing terms for the real Linux version ), it is a no-go for me.

Regards 

[Dhakkan]

While a custom distro is appealing in its own right, just as is being done for the RealTime system for cRIO, I wish for a hybrid approach - AppImage for GUI component which will maintain a consistency of user experience across distributions and still provide near native performance. Hardware drivers (DAQmx, etc.), being heavily dependent on the kernel and its associated modules, would be distro-specific.

Perhaps NI could support 3-4 most stable distros - Debian, RHEL, SLE? Users can then pick the same or derivatives of those distros that match the kernel versions of the officially supported equivalents.

My knowledge of building linux drivers and challenges thereof, is rather small - This may just be wishful thinking.

[softball]

Hi Steve

I finally stumbled over the solution to the font offset problem.

It was included as a side note in another thread :

Re: Application Directory primitive bug?

Christina_R

04-03-2024 09:54 AM - edited 04-03-2024 09:58 AM

The root cause of the misaligned fonts on some Linux distributions is in the OTF version of Nimbus Sans. Replace this font with a metric-compatible alternative, such as the Type1 version of Nimbus Sans, any version of Liberation Sans, etc.

For example, Ubuntu 20.04 is installing both OTF and T1 variants of this font, allowing for the following workaround in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <selectfont>
  <rejectfont>
   <glob>/usr/share/fonts/opentype/urw-base35/Nimbus*.otf</glob>
  </rejectfont>
 </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

[softball]

04-03-2024 09:54 AM - edited 04-03-2024 09:58 AM

The root cause of the misaligned fonts on some Linux distributions is in the OTF version of Nimbus Sans. Replace this font with a metric-compatible alternative, such as the Type1 version of Nimbus Sans, any version of Liberation Sans, etc.

For example, Ubuntu 20.04 is installing both OTF and T1 variants of this font, allowing for the following workaround in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <selectfont>
  <rejectfont>
   <glob>/usr/share/fonts/opentype/urw-base35/Nimbus*.otf</glob>
  </rejectfont>
 </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

[swatts]

Ooh thanks Softball,

Trying it now..

I might elevate it as an article in it's own right (obviously with credit to you and Christina)

All the best

[gt_thetic]

Hi @softball and @Christina_R,

I maintain the CTI VM with @swatts.

I have tested this solution on our Lubuntu Virtual Machine for hosting LabVIEW Community Edition and it has worked. I have created a ticket on our GitHub and it will be incorporated into the default user profile for the next release, giving users a better out-of-the-box experience. 

I personally use Linux daily, but have always been put off from using it as my main LabVIEW machine as this one has bugged me for years. 

[softball]

Hi

Thanks for the kudos.

Well, I have trouble with the fonts. Again. Now it is the whole font management in LabVIEW, that seems corrupted. I have described it here :

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/LabVIEW-2025-Q3-Install-on-Ubuntu-24-04/m-p/4450539#M1314146

Xubuntu 24.04.3 LTS and LabVIEW 2021 is fine with the font correction setting.

Xubuntu 24.04.3 LTS and LabVIEW 2025 Q3 is disgusting. 

Both based on the same Xubuntu image before LabVIEW being installed but running on different partitions.

I have no clue what is going on.

Just for the record, it is also a fifty-fifty, whether the disgusting LabVIEW will start at all. Licensing issue. Some days it starts. Some days it don't. 

Regards

[softball]

Hi

I have now installed an image clone of Xubuntu 24.04.2 LTS and LabVIEW 2025 Q3 to another computer. The image that last time corrupted the font management in LabVIEW, when Xubuntu was updated afterwards on the original computer.

This time was different. I again updated Xubuntu from 24.04.2 LTS to 24.04.3 LTS. Again the installer said it could only do a partial upgrade. I accepted and then the upgrade proceeded without further notices.

But this time the end result is a Xubuntu 24.04.3 LTS without any worrying issues, -and- LabVIEW 2025 Q3 is working without any ugly font issues.

So, all good.

Regards