Thanks all, I talked to my instructor and he says he's been using the up2 for a long time, and that its easy to learn. According to the syllabus we are going to synthesize a microchip PIC on it! He also says they are in the process of revamping some of the course material for next semester... unfortunately Im taking it now!
Probably the best thing for me is buy the up2 (to do the labs and keep up with the class) but would really like to purchase a cyclone board to experiment with nios and linux.
Theres a cyclone board here, its pricier than the parallax cyclone but it has a nios port ready to go on it:
http://www.jopdesign.com/cyclone/index.jsp (
http://www.jopdesign.com/cyclone/index.jsp)
Does either the parallax cyclone FastPack or the Jopdesign board have enough resources (gates, memory, etc) to run linux on the nios?
Thanks!