PowerCLI Core has been tried on two Linux distributions: VMware's Photon OS and Ubuntu 14.04, however that is not to say it would not work on other distros. In fact, .Net Core (which PowerCLI Core consumes) supports a variety of Linux distributions which can be found here. I recently needed to run PowerCLI Core on a Debian 8 system which required a few minor tweaks to get working. I figure I might as well document the steps in case this might help others wanting to use PowerCLI Core which now includes PowerNSX on a Debian system.

Step 1 - Append the following repo source to /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file:

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main

Step 2 - Run the following command to update the repo

apt-get update

Step 3 - Download .deb package for latest Powershell release and run the following command which will generate list of required dependencies:

wget https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v6.0.0-alpha.14/powershell_6.0.0-alpha.14-1ubuntu1.16.04.1_amd64.deb

dpkg -i powershell_6.0.0-alpha.14-1ubuntu1.16.04.1_amd64.deb

Step 4 - Run the following command to install powershell along with its dependencies:

apt-get -f install

Step 5 - The next series of commands will download and setup PowerCLI Core:

mkdir -p /powershell

wget https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/powerclicore/PowerCLI_Core.zip -O /powershell/PowerCLI.ViCore.zip

apt-get -y install unzip

unzip /powershell/PowerCLI.ViCore.zip -d /powershell

mkdir -p /root/.config/powershell/

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules

unzip /powershell/PowerCLI.ViCore.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules

unzip /powershell/PowerCLI.Vds.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules

mv /powershell/Start-PowerCLI.ps1 /root/.config/powershell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Step 6 (Optional) - Install PowerNSX module:

wget https://github.com/vmware/powernsx/archive/master.zip -O /powershell/master.zip

unzip /powershell/master.zip -d /powershell/

mkdir ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules/PowerNSX

cp /powershell/powernsx-master/PowerNSX.ps*1 ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules/PowerNSX/

If everything installed successfully, you should be able to now launch PowerCLI Core by simply typing "powershell"