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
Alpine	3.11.5	ppc64le	Tle	Needs internet connection for the setup-alpine to fetch grub-ieee1275 and sfdisk. Let's hope the next version would include these two packages in the ISO. I have lodged a request
Adélie	1.0-beta1	ppc64	awilfox	Needs the easy-kernel-power8 package instead of easy-kernel. KDE 5 is stable.
CentOS	7.7	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
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.
	9.9.0	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
	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	32	ppc64le	Tle	Server variant works perfectly! The Workstation Live variant failed to load kernel image at Petitboot prompt, the workaround is to change kernel/initrd paths before booting to be /ppc/ppc64/{vmlinuz,initrd.img} instead of /ppc/ppc
	31	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU. When installing GNOME (workstation-product-environment) you have to do this modification
	30	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
	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
openSUSE	Leap 15.1	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
	Tumbleweed 20190805	ppc64le	Jonsger	Install via serial console (over ssh) and connect HDMI to dedicated GPU. Use Xorg config from Troubleshooting/GPU#Step_2:_Create_Xorg_Configuration_Snippet. radeonsi is missing, as Mesa-dri is not build for ppc64le. Workaround: install from home:jbrielmaier:ppc64le repo.
Ubuntu Server	19.10 (kernel 5.3.x)	ppc64le	FlyingBlackbird	Works OOTB with Gnome (installed via sudo tasksel choosing Ubuntu Desktop) and a single SATA HDD. I only needed to configure Xorg for a FullHD resolution of the AST GPU as described in Troubleshooting/GPU#Display_stuck_at_default_low_resolution_with_AST_HDMI_GPU. Note that NVMe SSDs may crash when a manual or scheduled discard ("trim") is started (due to a kernel bug fixed in 5.4 but there is a work-around, see POWER9 Hardware Compatibility List/PCIe Devices#NVMe_Drives. So far a combination of a NVMe SSD and SATA HDD makes troubles if both drives are used for OS installation targets with booting from HDD causes ATA error messages (I am investigating this, see the up-to-date status of my system configuration).
	19.04	ppc64le	MPC7500	Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
	18.10	ppc64le	q66	Installs and works out of box with no changes, Xfce4.
Void Linux for Power Architecture	n/a	ppc64le/ppc64/ppc	q66	Staging fork of Void Linux (custom binary repository and infrastructure, merging changes back upstream), fully functional, both endians, glibc or musl, 64-bit or 32-bit (32-bit works on Talos with 64-bit kernel or in a VM)
Whonix (clearnet link)	15	ppc64le	JeremyRand	Appears to work fine with KDE (both Gateway and Workstation) when the Whonix instructions are followed; host OS used for testing was Debian 10. Haven't tried XFCE and CLI.
	14	ppc64le	JeremyRand	Appears to work fine when the Whonix instructions are followed; host OS used for testing was Debian 10. (UPDATE: Whonix 14 is no longer recommended by upstream for KVM; use Whonix 15 instead.)
	14	amd64	JeremyRand	Appears to boot without errors when the Whonix/x86 instructions are followed; host OS used for testing was Debian 10. Didn't test anything beyond showing the XFCE GUI.

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
OpenBSD	6.8	powerpc64	DanielPocock	Official support since OpenBSD 6.8
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 (@crystalgamma:matrix.org on Matrix)
• GuixSD (Isengaara)

External Links

• Operating Systems for PowerPC PPC32be / PPC64be / PPC64le