Xilinx is a good choice if you're developing on a Linux workstation; I've had the most success with their tools on mine. Xilinx also supports the widest range of products with their free toolchains; it's only some of the highest-end parts that require a paid license. With others like Altera (nee Intel) the free tools only support the lowest of the low-end devices.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the Xilinx ISE toolchain. I have it running fine in a CentOS VM on my Gentoo desktop, and still use it for the Spartan series. In general Xilinx tools are about a year (or more) behind their products, so getting too close to the bleeding edge is problematical unless you have an In with the factory FAEs. That's an advantage for the older ISE and Spartan line. However, the other posters are right--Series 7 and Vivado (and beyond) are currently 'where it's at', and most of the online 'conversations' (forums et al) are more active on those products. They've been out long enough now that the initial rough edges are gone.

I bought the Avnet Arty board when it first came out to evaluate the Artix, and it works fine. As it uses the Vivado suite it also provides an introduction to the new HDL C/C++ workflow. As oliviert's excellent reply notes, you have to decide how much you want to explore at once. There's the base Verilog and VHDL languages you need to come up to speed with, the C/C++ HDL for the 'next generation' of development, and then the entirety of integrated SoC development if you go with a Zynq-based product. Personally, I'd start easy with one of the low-cost FPGA-only boards using the Artix and work on getting the toolchain running and study how to integrate Verilog/VHDL code and the Artix macro libraries at a low level to drive I/O, instantiate memory, run the DSP blocks, etc. The next step would be to acquire a Zynq-based board and study the higher-level C/C++/SoC workflow. Doing it all at once could be a bit overwhelming.

The other advantage of that approach is you start with the lowest-cost boards, so when you blow up I/O pins while learning you don't cry quite as much or pull too much hair out :-)

From your post, it looks to me like you've done your homework and are on the right track. Good luck!

