starting to learn FPGAs

Hi LETNI321,

You can find answers to your questions at docs.altera.com ! In particular, there is the Altera FPGA Software Installation and Licensing guide: 

https://docs.altera.com/r/docs/683472/26.1/altera-fpga-software-installation-and-licensing/answers-to-top-faqs 

To get information about getting the Quartus Prime software. 

Regarding the hardware, you can consider trying first the Power and Cost Optimized devices such Agilex 3, MAX 10 or Cyclone 10; and the devkits based on those devices, both from Altera or partner solutions. 

Hi LETNI321,
For best compatibility, you may check https://www.altera.com/design/guidance/software/os-support, usually we will use the latest version of Quartus Lite/std. But you will also need to check what specific deivce that you are targeting, some of the device is remove/obsolete in the latest release of Quartus. 

Thanks

Hi,

Altera has OS support doc for Quartus a d related Tools.

https://www.altera.com/design/guidance/software/os-support

You'll  notice that e.g. new Ubuntu versions aren't supported by Questa simulator, thus you'd go for Ubuntu 20.04 if you prefer Ubuntu. You can use latest Quartus Prime Lite 25.1 for Cyclone 10 LP and MAX 10 devices respectively 26.1 Prime Pro 26.1 for Agilex 3 or 5. It has a free license for these devices.

Choice of FPGA series and development board depends much on your intended FPGA application, signal speed, logic complexity, required interfaces.

Regards Frank

"Given that some versions of Quartus work better on Linux than others, I'd like to know exactly:

- Which Linux distribution is best suited for Quartus?

- Which version of the operating system should be used?

- Which version of Quartus should be used with it?