Install notes quartus 14.1 or 15.1.1 under ubuntu 14.04: Helpful info obtained from: https://www-acc.gsi.de/wiki/Timing/QuartusInstallUbuntu1404 and from: http://www.fpga-dev.com/altera-usb-blaster-with-ubuntu/ Install vmware 7.0 Download .iso for Ubuntu 14.04 Give ubuntu 120GB disk partiton Install ubuntu within vmware Launch ubuntu and from terminal: mkdir quartus cd quartus Download quartus from https://dl.altera.com/?edition=web Move the tar file (in downloads) to quartus directory Get some 32-bit libraries to make quartus work from terminal: sudo apt-get install libxext6:i386 sudo apt-get install libxtst6:i386 sudo apt-get install libxi6:i386 sudo apt-get install vim tar xvf Quartus-web-14.1.0.186-linux.tar sudo bash ./setup.sh Install just for cyclone IV and help Install quartus in /opt/quartus/14.1 You may see some errors for inconsistency detected by ld.so: di-close.c edit .bashrc in $HOME to include the bath to the quartus executables at end of .bashrc include: quartus_home=/opt/quartus/14.1 PATH=$quartus_home/quartus/bin:$PATH PATH=$quartus_home/modelsim_ase/bin:$PATH export PATH Finally, source your .bashrc to make changes effective To get the programmer up, do the following: Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-altera-usbblaster.rules with the following in it: be sure there are no trailing spaces after the backslash SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="09fb", ATTR{idProduct}=="6001|6002|6003|6010|6810", \ OWNER="root", GROUP="root", MODE="0666" SYMLINK+="usbblaster" From the terminal, make the changes effective... sudo udevadm control --reload Download one other missing library from packages.ubuntu.com/precise/libudev0 click on the amd64 one which will download it Go to your downloads directory where the file libudev0_175-0ubuntu9_amd64.deb is install from terminal by: sudo dpkg -i libudev0_175-0ubuntu9_am64.deb plug in the usbblaster cable from the terminal dmesg | tail you should see something like [ 2001.671770] usb 2-2.2: new full-speed USB device number 5 using uhci_hcd [ 2001.824811] usb 2-2.2: New USB device found, idVendor=09fb, idProduct=6001 [ 2001.824833] usb 2-2.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 2001.824836] usb 2-2.2: Product: USB-Blaster [ 2001.824837] usb 2-2.2: Manufacturer: Altera [ 2001.824839] usb 2-2.2: SerialNumber: 91d28408 If so, good. Make sure jtagd has access to the list of devices: make the directory /etc/jtagd if it does not exist from terminal sudo cp /opt/altera/14.1/quartus/linux64/pgm_parts.txt /etc/jtagd/jtagd.pgm_parts Test again from terminal jtagconfig you should see something like: $ jtagconfig 1) CV SoCKit [2-2] 02D020DD 5CSEBA6(.|ES)/5CSEMA6/.. 4BA00477 SOCVHPS or 1) USB-Blaster [3-1] 020F30DD EP3C25/EP4CE22 Modelsim did not invoke, error as follows: traylor@traylor-MacBook:/opt/quartus/15.0/modelsim_ase$ vsim /opt/quartus/15.0/modelsim_ase/bin/../linux/vish: error while loading shared libraries: libXft.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Did this first: traylor@traylor-MacBook:/opt/quartus/15.0/modelsim_ase$ sudo apt-get install libxft2:i386 Then get /opt/quartus/15.0/modelsim_ase/bin/../linux/vish: error while loading shared libraries: libncurses.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory See: http://mattaw.blogspot.com/2014/05/making-modelsim-altera-starter-edition.html Do the following: sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential sudo apt-get install gcc-multilib g++-multilib \ lib32z1 lib32stdc++6 lib32gcc1 \ expat:i386 fontconfig:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libexpat1:i386 libc6:i386 libgtk-3-0:i386 \ libcanberra0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libice6:i386 libsm6:i386 libncurses5:i386 zlib1g:i386 \ libx11-6:i386 libxau6:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxft2:i386 libxrender1:i386 \ libxt6:i386 libxtst6:i386 This just worked and I had no further problems.