The less hip Linux distributions have very good support for the less popular CPU architectures. For example, Debian Jessie has an official ppc64el (ie, POWER8)

The less hip Linux distributions have very good support for the less popular CPU architectures. For example, Debian Jessie has an official ppc64el (ie, POWER8) release as well as mips and other platforms with low mindshare [1]. In my experience with Debian armhf of a ARM Chromebook (via crouton), all the packages repositories all work out of the box and I haven't noticed any issues. The only exception I've had has been (ironically) the Chromium browser -- but that application is famously complicated to build. The past few years I've been pleasantly surprised smoothly developing on machines using different CPU architectures is with open-source software (thanks to good automation (build bots), robust unit testing, and hard work by Debian maintainers and their upstream developers) Compared to the closed-source world of applications (application compatible between Windows and Windows RT, or Apple's transition from PowerPC Macs to x86 Macs), being CPU architecture agnostic using purely open-source software requires no effort at all. But being architecture agnostic using closed source applications of course suffer from the same issues as the other platforms. [1] https://www.debian.org/ports/ https://www.debian.org/ports/