Operating System Compatibility List

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Not everything is bug-free, so you might want to the check also Fixes in Progress about the state of their upstreaming. ppc64 and ppc64le refer to big-endian and little-endian, respectively; ppc refers to 32-bit.

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.
Alma 8.5 ppc64le Xilinder Works
8.8 ppc64le maninap Works OOTB. Insured /boot is ext4. AST GUI works for install and fast enough for sysadmin tasks. Survived kernel patching. Convert to Alma script was not tested.
9.3 ppc64le maninap AST GUI works for install. Firmware warning for xfs /boot. GUI installer has no option to create PREeP partition. Tested /boot as ext4, but only boots rescue kernel.
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
ALT 10.0 ppc64le MPC7500 Unable to install. The image is not displayed in Petitboot.
AOSC OS RR ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Arch RR ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Ataraxia 201101 ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Bedrock 0.7.28 ppc64 MPC7500 Not tested yet.
ppc64le JeremyRand Installed PyTorch on a Debian Bookworm VM, distro-morphed it to Bedrock, installed a Gentoo stratum, installed Gentoo's Electron package, Gentoo's Electron was able to use Debian's PyTorch without issues.
CentOS 7.7 ppc64le MPC7500 Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
8 ppc64le maninap Works OOTB. In place upgrade from Centos 7 also works (not officially supported). End Of Life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021.
CentOS Stream 8 ppc64le maninap Works OOTB. Converted from CentOS 8. Cyclical patch regressions impact AST GPU/Optical drives. End Of Life (EOL) on May 31st, 2024.
9 ppc64le maninap 10/2023 installer. Rescue kernel works, but others and kernel patching breaks. AST GPU works for install process. GUI installer has no option to create PREeP partition. In place upgrade from Streams 8 not tested (not officially supported).
Chimera 20220912 ppc64le MPC7500 Works.
Circle 8.6 ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Debian 12 (2022-03-21 weekly DVD ISO) ppc64le JeremyRand Seems to work fine with XFCE inside KVM (machine type = pseries).
11.1.0 (netinst) ppc64le Jas Installs and works out of box with no changes. Installer is on serial port, VGA is blank

(workaround). Works fine as a KVM host via virt-manager and a Debian 11 guest VM.

11 (2021-03-29 weekly DVD ISO) ppc64le JeremyRand Seems to work fine with XFCE inside KVM (machine type = pseries).
11/Sid (2021-02-02 snapshot) ppc64 JeremyRand Seems to work fine with XFCE inside KVM (machine type = pseries). Note that even though this ISO is labeled "10.0.0" in the filename, it is actually Sid, not Buster.
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.
10.0 (ISO is dated 2018-05-18) ppc64 JeremyRand ISO fails to boot in virt-manager (KVM; machine type = pseries).
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 JeremyRand Seems to work fine with KDE inside KVM (machine type = pseries). 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.
Devuan 4.0 ppc64le MPC7500 Works
Fedora 38 ppc64le Tle Works just fine. Mutter animation is a bit sluggish, very likely regressed
38 Rawhide 2022-12-23 ppc64le DKnoto Works just fine, see review on forum.
37 ppc64le ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
37 Beta ppc64le jbowen "Headless" server install works well, as does (GNOME) Workstation (graphics tested with a Sapphire Radeon HD5450).
36 ppc64le ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
35 ppc64le ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
34 ppc64le ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
33 ppc64le Tle Server and Workstation variant works perfectly!
ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
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

ClassicHasClass Review at Talospace.
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
ppc64le 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.

GNOME, Plasma and other desktops are supported. Ships working firefox, qtwebengine:5. latest install iso supporting both 4k and 64k pagesize kernels

17.0 ppc64 MarcusC XFCE4 and virt-manager verified
Glasnost 2021.10-01 ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Kicksecure (clearnet link) 16 ppc64le JeremyRand Appears to work fine with XFCE in a VM when the Kicksecure instructions are followed. Haven't tried CLI or host.
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.
Parabola 15-Apr-2021 ppc64le JeremyRand Not tested yet.
PowerEL 7 ppc64le MPC7500 Unable to install. The image is not displayed in Petitboot.
RHEL 9 ppc64le Tle Works
Riscy Slack (Slackware) 2020-11-17 ppc64le MPC7500 Works OOTB. I only needed the snippets for the AST GPU
Rocky 9.0 ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
9.2 ppc64le maninap 05/2023 installer. Rescue kernel works, but others and kernel patching breaks. AST GPU works for install process. GUI installer has no option to create PREeP partition. Convert to Rocky script appears to only be x86 right now.
T2 SDE 21.5 ppc64le MPC7500 Not tested yet.
Trisquel 11 ppc64le Simon Josefsson Review by Simon.
Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS ppc64le manatails Installs and works out of box with no changes.
20.04 LTS ppc64le Jas Installs and works out of box with no changes.
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 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).

UPDATE: Void Linux for Power ISA has been discontinued in January 2023 in favor of Chimera Linux. -JeremyRand

ppc64
ppc
Whonix (clearnet link) 16 ppc64le JeremyRand Appears to work fine with XFCE (both Gateway and Workstation) when the Whonix instructions are followed. Haven't tried CLI.
15 (Morphed from Sid) ppc64 JeremyRand Dependency conflicts prevent distro-morphing from Debian Sid to Whonix. I'm working on getting these fixed.
15 (Morphed from Buster) 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.)
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 13.1-RELEASE ppc64le kev009 The most recent release, 13.0-RELEASE has initial ppc64le support
13.1-RELEASE ppc64 kev009 The most recent release
12.0-RELEASE ppc64 kev009 Contains initial POWER9 support
OpenBSD 7.3 ppc64 philipp SMT not supported. Uses serial for output during installation. Otherwise installs and works fine.
OpenBSD 6.8 ppc64 DanielPocock Official support since OpenBSD 6.8

Ports in progress

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

Rejected Ports

External Links