Xilinx USB Platform Cable on Linux

Xilinx's Linux drivers for the platform cable make use of windriver, which is proprietary and is not supported on newer versions of the linux kernel (>2.6.18) and some great folks make a new driver to support the cables. You can download the driver from here XILINX USB/Parallel JTAG cables on Linux without windrv.

The setup is well described in the README

Download the driver somewhere and build, keeping in mind that the library isn't moved by the installer (you could certainly move it somewhere else).

The driver operates using LD_PRELOAD. I am not familiar enough with the xilinx webplatform software to know what all binaries are needed, but at least for the toplevel ise binary should work. Unless you want to preload the driver for everything, you can make an indirection shell script:

#!/bin/sh
# preloader

LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/libusb-driver.so
$0.real $@

Then you can go to the bin/lin directory and

mv ise ise.real;ln -s preloader ise
mv ise impact.real;ln -s preloader impact

Assuming you follow the udev instructions in the README to get the permissions permissive enough, you should be able to go about your merry way.