Operating System Compatibility List

Not everything is bug-free, so you might want to the check also Fixes in Progress about the state of their upstreaming.

GNU/Linux

Distribution	Version	Architecture	Reported by	Notes
Adélie	1.0-beta1	ppc64	awilfox	Needs the easy-kernel-power8 package instead of easy-kernel. KDE 5 is stable.
Debian	10 (2018-05-28 weekly DVD ISO)	ppc64le	JeremyRand	Seems to work fine. KDE crashes occasionally, but that might be unrelated to running it on POWER9. Works fine as a KVM host via virt-manager (tested with Debian 10 as the guest). Be warned that the installer will enable the contrib repos (without your knowledge or consent), which is bad from a software freedom standpoint.
	10	ppc64	awilfox	Only tested in KVM-PV. Using Adélie easy-kernel as kernel, Debian Buster userland.
	9.5.0	ppc64le (inside KVM; machine type = pseries)	JeremyRand	Seems to work fine with KDE. Default version of Linux works fine. Be warned that the installer will enable the contrib repos (without your knowledge or consent), which is bad from a software freedom standpoint. However, running dpkg-query -W -f='${Section}\t${Package}\n' | grep ^contrib (see this Stack Exchange answer) suggests that no actual packages from the contrib repos are installed by default, so you should be able to disable the contrib repos after installation without ever being exposed to contrib-packaged software.
	9	ppc64le	nashimus	Requires 4.16 or newer kernel. Installed Debian testing net install, set apt sources to Debian stable and downgraded, keeping 4.16 kernel. Most VMs failed to boot before updating qemu to 2.12.0.
Fedora	28	ppc64le	Sharkcz	only bare metal verified for now, you might want to enable SharkCZ's COPR repo for not-yet-upstreamed updates
			nashimus	May need to manually specify inst.stage2, during install. Workaround Bug
		ppc64	Sharkcz	discontinued in Fedora 29
Gentoo	n/a	ppc64le	luke-jr	Once installed, works fine.
	17.0	ppc64	MarcusC	XFCE4 and virt-manager verified
Whonix (clearnet link)	14	ppc64le	JeremyRand	Appears to work fine when the Whonix instructions are followed; host OS used for testing was Debian 10.
Ubuntu	18.10	ppc64le	q66	Installs and works out of box with no changes, Xfce4.

BSDs

Distribution	Version	Architecture	Reported by	Notes
FreeBSD	12.0	ppc64	kev009	Contains initial POWER9 support
	13-CURRENT	ppc64	kev009	Ongoing development activity, better than releases for the time being
POWER9BSD	13-CURRENT	ppc64	kev009	Advance POWER9 features for FreeBSD like Radix MMU, amdgpu etc

Ports in progress

Rapid progress is being made on these ports by members of the community.

• NixOS
• GuixSD (Isengaara)
• Parabola GNU/Linux-libre (Ebrasca)
• Void Linux (q66; ppc64 changes currently being upstreamed, provisional unofficial binary repository up)