The Qualcomm Atheros Open Powerline Toolkit is distributed using compressed tape archive files named open-plc-utils-x.x.x.tar.gz and open-plc-utils-x.x.x.tar.bz2 and standard compressed archive file named open-plc-utils-x.x.x.zip, where x.x.x is the version number. Archive files ending in .gz can be decompressed with the Linux gzip utility. Archive files ending in .bz2 can be decompressed with the Linux bzip2 utility. Archive files ending in .zip can be decompressed using the Linux unzip utility or the Windows WinZip utility. The contents of decompressed archives can be extracted using the Linux tar utility. Recent versions of the Linux tar utility allow decompression and extraction in one operation. The WinZip or 7-zip program may be used to decompress archives and extract contents on Microsoft Windows platforms.

Some Windows network administrators enable security software that removes .exe and other executable files from .zip archives in transit or in-situ. In that case, Windows user may want to download the *.tar.gz archive and use a program like 7zip to unpack the archive file.

The toolkit includes source code, build scripts, documentation and pre-compiled programs for Microsoft Windows. Some third party libraries may also be included to support Microsoft platforms. Although the Microsoft Windows versions of toolkit programs are pre-compiled and ready-to-run, they are not supported because this package is designed for use on Linux platforms.

The Windows installer included in this version of the toolkit needs Microsoft .NET 1.1. Windows versions of toolkit programs that communicate with powerline devices need WinPcap 4.1.2 or later. A copy of Microsoft .NET 1.1 and WinPcap 4.1.2 is included in the support folder.