2018.2+others hangs on "generating installed device list"

install ncurses5-compat-libs or ncurses5

2018.3 Doesn't work with multiple monitors

Yep. It's true :( There is no solution except to unplug them. I guess Xilinx doesn't really support Linux.

• ​https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Installation-and-Licensing/Vivado-2018-3-won-t-launch-on-Ubuntu-18-04-java-lang-reflect/td-p/934610

Ethernet Device Name

For older version (e.g. 2015.4) the Ethernet device must be named eth0 not something else. In Ubuntu 18.04, do the following to change back to eth0:

  edit /etc/default/grub
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0"
  update-grub

As of now (late 2017) Xilinx "supports" Ubuntu 16.04 (but not earlier Ubuntu releases)

License Server

2018-01-22 (UPDATE): ignore all the below; the certificate based "xilinx.lic" file loads just fine still in 2017.4.

2018-01-22 (hazen): Allegedly, as of Vivado 2017.4 a flexlm upgrade is needed. Downloaded the new flexlm 11.14.1.10 zip file from Xilinx onto a VM running 16.04. Fully update the 16.04.

Here is the not-very-helpful readme (reformatted a bit):

Setting up a new license server:

1.	Download the appropriate Xilinx FLEXnet license utilities for your server's 
        operating system from the Xilinx Download Center at Downloads.

2.	Unzip these utilities into a destination directory. Xilinx recommends you place 
        this directory into your application search path.

3.	After the FLEXnet utilities are installed, run the following commands to start 
        the floating license server:

Linux:
 <Server Tool directory>/lnx64.o/lmgrd.sh -c <path_to_license>/<license file>.lic \
     -l <path_to_license>/<log filename>1.log
			
Existing license server serving certificate-based license:

For existing FLEXnet license servers serving certificate-based licenses, a common practice 
is to copy the contents of the license file, mailed from xilinx.notification@entitlenow.com, 
into the existing license file on your FLEXnet server.

Note: Restart the floating license server to ensure the new Xilinx licenses are enabled.

Doesn't work. Turns out one must do:

  $ sudo apt install lsb

"LSB" is some linux standard base stuff which is required.