Successfully Installed LabVIEW 2018 on openSUSE Leap 15

Successfully Installed LabVIEW 2018 on openSUSE Leap 15

According to NI’s official documentation, the Linux version of LabVIEW is compatible with CentOS and openSUSE 42. However, since openSUSE itself has already moved on to Leap 15, I decided to give it a try anyway and install it directly. The result was fairly smooth: after mounting the ISO image, I simply ran INSTALL with root privileges, clicked through the prompts, and the installation completed successfully.

openSUSE looks quite polished, but for someone like me who has only used Ubuntu and Fedora, the system still feels rather unfamiliar. It will probably take some time to get used to it. Or perhaps I should go back and try CentOS 7 again—but honestly, I just can’t accept CentOS’s rough aesthetic. You shouldn’t have to give up on visual appeal just because you want to use a system for server-related work.

So far, I haven’t run into any compatibility issues. Based on my earlier experience installing LabVIEW 2016 on a MacBook Air, it seems that all three major platforms are now technically supported. In practice, though, the choice still deserves careful consideration. Which operating system will be the best option in the future remains an open question.

Windows has the advantage of familiarity and a complete ecosystem of resources, especially with NI’s official DAQ platform support. Its downside is that Windows itself is not always very reliable. macOS and Linux are the opposite: fewer resources, but generally more reliable systems. Between those two, the tight integration of Apple hardware and software gives the Mac a certain elegance, but also makes it significantly more expensive. Taking everything into account, Linux seems like a reasonable compromise.

The only real trouble spot is still NI’s own hardware driver support. If the boards can’t be used, then the system is almost useless.

The revolution has only just begun.