Jira supports most of the major operating systems, so the choice of which operating system to run Jira on becomes a matter of expertise, comfort, and, in most cases, the existing organization's IT infrastructure and requirements.

The operating systems supported by Atlassian are Windows and Linux. There is a Jira distribution for mac OSX, but this is mostly for evaluation purposes only. Cloud-based deployment options are also available for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. However, with these cloud options, there are restrictions for components such as database support.

With both Windows and Linux, Atlassian provides an executable installer wizard package, which bundles all the necessary components to simplify the installation process (only available for standalone distribution). There are minimal differences when it comes to installing, configuring, and maintaining Jira on different operating systems. If you do not have any preferences and would like to keep initial costs down, CentOS Linux is a good choice.