I needed LabVIEW for a school project and, naturally, needed a way to get it to work in Linux! It took some hassling my school’s IT department but eventually they managed to get an iso image from NI called lv2013SP1pro-linux.iso. How you procure either an iso or a physical cd will be up to you. Godspeed.

Installation involved jumping through some hoops but here’s what got it to work:

Ubuntu 14.04 and Freya:

$ sudo apt-get install lib32z1 lib32ncurses5 lib32bz2-1.0 lib32stdc++6
$ sudo apt-get install libxinerama1:i386

Ubuntu 16.04 and Loki:

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install libz1:i386 libncurses5:i386 libbz2-1.0:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libxinerama1:i386
$ sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx:i386

Freya:

$ sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa:i386

Ubuntu 14.04:

$ sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx:i386

All systems:

$ sudo apt-get install xfonts-75dpi xfonts-100dpi

Ubuntu 14.04 and Freya:

$ sudo cp /usr/lib32/libbz2.so.1 /usr/lib

All systems:

Reboot. You actually need to reboot here otherwise the program installs in Chinese. Why? No idea.

Extract the iso into a new folder by opening it with Archive Manager. CD into that folder.

Ubuntu 16.04 and Loki:

$ cd bin
$ sudo apt install fish
$ fish
$ chmod a+x *
$ exit
$ cd ..

All systems:

$ sudo sh ./INSTALL

I just pressed “y” for all the installation options. If you need to conserve space you could probably press “n” for the examples, documentation, and such.

You should be able to open the application now from your menu. By default the fonts are hideous and adjusting them is very much trial and error because some fonts make LabVIEW go back to Chinese. Here are the settings I used which work pretty well:

Tools → Options → Environment → Fonts

Adjust each of the 3 fonts (Application, Dialog, System) to:

Font: B&H Lucida
Size: 12

Restart LabVIEW completely.

At last I’ve got a pretty solid version of LabVIEW running. The functions window seems to be a little bit wonky but I usually just use Ctrl+Space for inserting stuff anyways.

LabVIEW 2013 running in Elementary OS