Using LabView with a Debian Distribution

So after 1 year of Windows 10, I again return back to Unix-like systems. Before the Windows 10, I used OSX and Ubuntu. I should say, I was happy but you can’t know how life treats you in the end. Anyway, now I got a new job that needs some LabView programming and further graphical programming skills, I wanted to install LabView to my personal computer. University generously provides licenses and needed *.iso files. But, I learned-a bit harshly- that, the package systems of CentOS, RedHat, Scientific Linux, SUSE are different than Debian, Ubuntu systems and National Instruments only support the early mentioned ones package system; *.rpm. So, I will going to make a short tutorial for the ones who wants to use the LabView in Debian systems. I think, this should also work for Ubuntu.

Mount the *.iso image first. Copy files to the local drive, like documents for example. Then install alien to convert packages from *.rpm to *.deb with the command;

apt-get install alien fakeroot

Convert packages with the command;

alien -d \*.rpm

The converted packages should be the ones in the below. If some of them are not converted, convert them manually with the command;

alien -d “name of the packge”.rpm

For example;

alien -d labview-2017-desktop_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb.rpm

• labview-2017-desktop_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-examples_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-exe_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-help_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-pro_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-ref_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-appbuild_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-core_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• labview-2017-rte_17.0.0-2_amd64.deb

• nitdmsi_17.0.0-1_amd64.deb

• nicurli_17.0.0-1_amd64.deb

• nissli_17.0.0-1_amd64.deb

• lvsupport2017-vianalyzer_17.0.0-1_amd64.deb

• nisslcerts_17.0.0-4_all.deb generated

• nijsonmapi_17.0.0-2_all.deb generated

• nisvcloc_17.0.0-2_all.deb generated

• nilvcompare_17.0.0-2_all.deb generated

• nilvmerge_17.0.0-2_all.deb generated

Then install the packages with the command;

dpkg -i \*.deb

Now, you can find the executable from the adress;

usr/local/natinst/LabVIEW-2017-64/labview

you can create an alias to easily open it from terminal;

alias labview='/usr/local/natinst/LabVIEW-2017-64/labview'

if you write labview on terminal, now you can access to program!

Joy of having a working LabView distribution on your Debian violently interrupted by the sound problems 🙁

One of the reasons that, I would like to use LabView in my personal device is to create some visualization and GUI for noise/music. So, I tried to use the sound VI’s but unfortunately, they can not find the microphone and speaker! This turns out also a problem of distribution; because CentOS related distributions use Open Sound System(OSS) for sound architecture, Debian-like systems use Advance Linux Sound Architecture(ALSA). I tried to switch to OSS, but this resulted in broken sound system and fix takes another 1 day. So, I will try to use emulation packages like alsa-oss, but as I look around some people tried it, didn’t get it work with LabView. Anyway, we will see! Thanks for reading.

Ps. in the bash script INSTALL, the package niwebpipelinei-2.0.5-f3.i386.rpm is also on the list of the installed packages. I didn’t encounter any errors even though I did not install it.

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