Installation of Xilinx ISE 8.2 under Linux (Kernel 2.6.22)

Content

Installation of Xilinx ISE/EDK under Ubuntu/Debian
See Installation guide for ISE/EDK 6.3 and 7.1.

Installation of the non-proprietary USB driver (a lot easier to compile)

Long time I didn't risk to switch from the deprecated hotplug to udev, because I thought the Xilinx USB driver wouldn't work with udev. Some days ago I found an ingenious wiki site which includes a very short and simple guide to install an alternative USB driver. And I sill cannot believe it, but this installation is so simple, that it's really done in 3 minutes.

But after this guide there was still a small problem. I couldn't run impact as a normal user. I always got errors like:
[...]
File version of /opt/ise/bin/lin/xusbdfwu.hex = 1021(dec), 0401.
Please run /opt/ise:/opt/ise/bin/lin/setup_pcusb with root privilege to update
the firmware. Disconnect and then reconnect the cable from the USB port to
complete the driver update.
Cable connection failed.
Cable autodetection failed.
But you can easily solve the problem by updating the firmware in the ISE directory and running setup_pcusb:
cd /opt/ise/bin/lin
cp /usr/share/xusbdfwu.hex .
bash setup_pcusb
Now you can run impact or usbupload also as normal user.

Many thanks to the author Smanz of the wiki page of the Kirchhoff Institute of Physics (Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg) and to Michael Gernoth, whose website was the basis of the wiki page.

Well, if you're wondering why I'm so enthused, just take a look at my old guides about the installation of the proprietary Xilinx USB driver (Guide #1, Guide #2). Wow, what a waste of time :)