A typical software debug solution for an embedded systems might involve a JTAG connection to the board, and then some kind of protocol translation software that handles communication between GDB's remote serial protocol and the target JTAG port (see OpenOCD, for instance). The FPGA systems I'm working with include JTAG …

Altera's Quartus tools include some special software to download bitstreams to their devices over USB (a DE-2 eval board, in my case). They require some tricky work to set up properly on Fedora - my dev host of choice. But you're in luck! I've packaged up an RPM that takes care …