Cisco Packet Tracer 7.1 is created by Cisco Systems^TM and is now provided for free distribution. Self learners are now able to download Cisco Packet Tracer after registering on Cisco Netacad website. A free Packet Tracer 101 (English), a 1-hour self-paced online course is also offered to every registered (free) student to help them get started with PacketTracer 7.1.  So you can register and download from here.

The cisco packettracer 7.1 is available for GNU/Linux under the next requirements:

• nss,linicu and ssl libraries.
• QT5 script-tools, WebKit.
• Cisco NetSpace account. (Mandatory)
• x86_64 family processor (Cisco droped i86 support for Linux)

We need install some libraries as follows:

$ sudo dnf install zlib-devel ncurses-devel gtk2 glibc glibc-devel  \\
 libpng12 libstdc++ libX11-devel libXrender libXrandr libusb \\ 
 libXtst nss qt qtwebkit qt5-qtmultimedia qt5-qtwebkit

x86_64 (64bits)

Today most people have a x86_64 machine and this time we have three options for resolve the OpenSSL dependency:

1.- Just download the package generated by me and simply trust me (I call this the ugliest method because i don’t provide any warranty):

$ sudo dnf copr enable bt0dotninja/openssl-lib-compat
$ sudo dnf install openssl-lib-compat

2.- Compile your own version (I call the “just ugly” method because you can check the source):

First get the code:

$ wget http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/17/Everything/source/SRPMS/o/openssl-1.0.0i-1.fc17.src.rpm
$ sudo dnf install @development-tools fedora-packager krb5-devel
$ sudo rpm -Uvh openssl-1.0.0i-1.fc17.src.rpm

For the build process we need super user access:

$ su -
# cd rpmbuild/SPECS/
# wget http://bt0.ninja/rpm/openssl-lib-compat-1.0.0.spec
# rpmbuild -bb openssl-lib-compat-1.0.0.spec
# rpm -i ../RPMS/x86_64/openssl-lib-compat-1.0.0i-1.fc27.x86_64.rpm
# exit

So many thanks to Yves L’ECUYER owner of http://www.deltaeridani.com, the original spec and the example are all from him.

Cisco Packet Tracer 7.1 will be downloaded from Cisco Networking Academy Portal,

$ tar -xzf PacketTracer71_*_linux.tar.gz && cd PacketTracer71
$ chmod +x install
$ sudo ./install

After accept the EULA, the installation begins, we need set the environment variables with the next command:

$ sudo chmod +x /opt/pt/set_ptenv.sh
$ sudo /opt/pt/set_ptenv.sh
$ sudo chmod +x /opt/pt/set_qtenv.sh
$ sudo /opt/pt/set_qtenv.sh

And finally fixing some missing dependencies (Many thanks to Robertpro for this fix )

# As user...
mkdir ~/.lib64
wget https://github.com/robertpro/tips/raw/59d14e7b148ebd10698ad3621b4c8a0bad38844b/packet_tracer_fedora26/libicudata.so.52 -O ~/.lib64/libicudata.so.52
wget https://github.com/robertpro/tips/raw/59d14e7b148ebd10698ad3621b4c8a0bad38844b/packet_tracer_fedora26/libicui18n.so.52 -O ~/.lib64/libicui18n.so.52
wget https://github.com/robertpro/tips/raw/59d14e7b148ebd10698ad3621b4c8a0bad38844b/packet_tracer_fedora26/libicuuc.so.52 -O ~/.lib64/libicuuc.so.52

# Adding new library path ONLY for the packettracer startup script 
sudo sed -i "s|lib|lib:$HOME/.lib64|g" /opt/pt/packettracer

If for some reason Robertpro stops hosting that libraries, you can download it from here.

Graphical Launcher on Gnome

With our favorite plain text editor we will edit the file /usr/share/applications/pt7.desktop as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Name=PacketTracer 7.1 
Comment=Networking Cisco 
GenericName=PacketTracer 7.1 
Type=Application
Exec=/opt/pt/packettracer 
Icon=pt7
StartupNotify=true

Or as point me the always clever x3mboy, you can just:

$ sudo cp /opt/pt/bin/Cisco-PacketTracer.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Now we will run Cisco Packet Tracer 7.1 from our Desktop:

Enjoy 😛