Beginning in 2018, NI offers a new catalog of Linux Desktop support for a variety of test and measurement hardware on the PXI Express platform. With this release, there has been a change to the way that NI’s driver software is acquired and installed onto a Linux Desktop system. Instead of providing an executable INSTALL script as in the past, NI now provides a repository add-on that can be downloaded and used to instruct your Linux distribution’s native package manager to install NI driver software packages such as NI-DAQmx, NI-VISA, NI-488.2, and NI-Sync.
NI Linux Device Drivers repository registration package options |
Static repository registration packages are labelled with a date-based suffix, such as ni-RHEL7CENTOS7-drivers-2021Q4. Software from this repository is not intended to change, and it is updated only for critical patches. Use this kind of repository when you need to reproduce a specific software stack. |
Stream repository registration packages are labeled with a -stream suffix, for example: ni-RHEL7CENTOS7-drivers-stream. Software in this repository is updated regularly with the latest versions of each driver package as it is released. Running an update/upgrade command with a package manager will update installed NI packages to their latest released version for systems that have registered a stream repository. This kind of repository is the simplest way to keep NI driver software up to date. |
Firstlook is present in repository registration package names, for example ni-ubuntu2004firstlook-drivers-2021Q3.deb, to identify a repository that does not contain one or more of the drivers present in the other feeds. This commonly occurs when NI adds support for a new Linux OS distribution and there is a transition period while individual drivers are gradually added or validated on that distribution. If you plan to upgrade to a new distribution and you see "firstlook" in its NI repository registration package name, refer to the Supported Drivers table to ensure that the NI products you need support the new distribution |