motherboard recommendations?

motherboard recommendations?

[Jacek Poplawski]

Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
serious problems with AGP in Linux.

Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?

Which motherboard works stable for you?

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Jacek Poplawski]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 4:31 PM, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:
> Which ASUS board, the K8V?  If so, just look for a board with
> components that are known to work well with Linux.  Honestly, these
> days Linux supports alot more stuff right out of the box.

I was thinking the same few years ago, but on two Asus boards two had problems.
K8V-X SE is the board I have now, it's very bad choice for Linux, it
crashes very often when starting X (with DRI) - it's related to buggy
BIOS and AGP.
On another board SATA was supported after few months and there was
constant problem with network (there was long discussion about it on
LKML) - networking was working after boot but stops working after a
while. It was never fixed, so I don't use this board anymore.

-- 
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NetHack - meet interesting creatures, kill them and eat their bodies
Usenet - meet interesting people from all over the world and flame them
Decopter - unrealistic helicopter simulator, get it from http://decopter.sf.net

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[John Stoffel]

Jacek> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 4:31 PM, John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:
>> Which ASUS board, the K8V?  If so, just look for a board with
>> components that are known to work well with Linux.  Honestly, these
>> days Linux supports alot more stuff right out of the box.

Jacek> I was thinking the same few years ago, but on two Asus boards
Jacek> two had problems.  K8V-X SE is the board I have now, it's very
Jacek> bad choice for Linux, it crashes very often when starting X
Jacek> (with DRI) - it's related to buggy BIOS and AGP.

Sure, I can understand your frustration here.  I'd be pissed too.  :]
I spent a bunch of time looking at motherboards and finally settled on
the one I got because of good reports.  Don't get a recent board, get
something that's been out for six months to a year with good reviews
on newegg.com to make sure you don't get bitten by stuff like this.

Jacek> On another board SATA was supported after few months and there
Jacek> was constant problem with network (there was long discussion
Jacek> about it on LKML) - networking was working after boot but stops
Jacek> working after a while. It was never fixed, so I don't use this
Jacek> board anymore.

Gotta say my M2N32-SLI Deluxe has been working just fine from day
one.  Can't complain at all.  So much so that I'm thinking of getting
another to be my new file server system, but money is tight right
now.  :]

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[David Sanders]

On Tuesday 16 September 2008 09:57, Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Which motherboard works stable for you?

Intel D975XBX works very stable for me.

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Chris Snook]

Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
> Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
> serious problems with AGP in Linux.
> 
> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?
> 
> Which motherboard works stable for you?

The conventional way of ensuring that a piece of hardware will work well with 
Linux is to hire a few kernel developers, and ship a hundred samples to other 
kernel developers around the world, with complete hardware specs.  This 
technique is slow and expensive, and still not foolproof.

Alternatively, you could ask for motherboard recommendations on an enthusiast 
forum, which this mailing list is not.  This technique is fast and cheap, but 
still not foolproof.

-- Chris

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 03:57:25PM +0200, Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
> Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
> serious problems with AGP in Linux.

The A8V on the other hand works flawlessly.  I have been running one for
about 4 years and AGP works fine on it.

> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?
> 
> Which motherboard works stable for you?

My mythtv box runs a Q6600 on an Asus P5K which so for works great.  It
does have the occational odd message abour CRC errors from the network
port (atl) although networking is working just fine.  No idea what that
is about, so I am not too concerned about it.

I have used Asus boards for 15 years now, and I am not switching.
Enough other boards have given weird problems that should be that I
don't want to deal with them.  I do avoid certain brands of chipsets
though, even on Asus boards, becasue even Asus can only do so much with
the components they are given.  So I have not used SiS since 486 days
(where they were really good), no longer bother with VIA since they just
don't seem to be that good when it comes down to the details, and no
ATI.  So intel and nvidia chipset boards are what I use on Asus boards.
So far it has worked for me for running Linux.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Matthew Stoltenberg]

>> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
>> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
>> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
>> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?
>>
>> Which motherboard works stable for you?
I got an ASUS P5Q (P45 chipset) a couple of weeks ago.  A couple of
minor issues:
* The Marvell IDE controller is broken in 2.6.25 and 2.6.26.
* Make sure the sata controller is running in AHCI mode
* The onboard Atheros NIC is not supported in the kernel.  I have to
build the driver seperately (it's actually on the driver disk)

The intel HD audio works great.

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 10:03:55AM -0500, Matthew Stoltenberg wrote:
> I got an ASUS P5Q (P45 chipset) a couple of weeks ago.  A couple of
> minor issues:
> * The Marvell IDE controller is broken in 2.6.25 and 2.6.26.

Well I must admit I have never tried a marvell ide controller before.
Support only seems very recent, so they are not yet on my list of things
I know work.

> * Make sure the sata controller is running in AHCI mode

Well of course, AHCI is a lovely feature to have.

> * The onboard Atheros NIC is not supported in the kernel.  I have to
> build the driver seperately (it's actually on the driver disk)

Atheros?  Hmm, the P5K was using atlantic, so I wonder why they are not
using atheros.

> The intel HD audio works great.

That's always something.

So overall it sounds like:

Sound works
IDE probably will soon
Networking can be made to work, and hopefully will go in mainline kernel
soon.
SATA works.

That's not too bad for a brand new board.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 12:09:33PM -0400,  wrote:
> Atheros?  Hmm, the P5K was using atlantic, so I wonder why they are not
> using atheros.

So I am clueless here.  atl is atheros, which is what I have on my
P5K, except an older model.  I see mentions that 2.6.27 is supposed to
suport the new chip on the P5Q.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Matthew Stoltenberg]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 12:09:33PM -0400,  wrote:
>> Atheros?  Hmm, the P5K was using atlantic, so I wonder why they are not
>> using atheros.
>
> So I am clueless here.  atl is atheros, which is what I have on my
> P5K, except an older model.  I see mentions that 2.6.27 is supposed to
> suport the new chip on the P5Q.

Well... That's what I get for not doing make oldconfig :)  Voila...
It works in rc7.

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Stephen Clark]

Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
> Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
> serious problems with AGP in Linux.
> 
> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?
> 
> Which motherboard works stable for you?
> --
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>
Hi,

I am extremely satisfied with my intel dg33fb MB. Only two issues I have
is onboard nic won't WOL and iTCO watchdog timer doesn't reboot the system.

Steve,
-- 

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety."  (Ben Franklin)

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty
decreases."  (Thomas Jefferson)

re: motherboard recommendations?

[Kasper Sandberg]

On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:57 +0200, Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
> Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
> serious problems with AGP in Linux.

Appears to work fine for me on my K8V Deluxe and K8V SE Deluxe..

anyway, i have a gigabyte X48 DQ6 board.

the two realtek NIC's initially had problems, but fixes have been merged
and it works excellent. Audio works(not the two separate channels for
front), usb works, sensors work, ahci on both the jmicron and ICH works.
pata_jmicron works aswell.

> 
> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?
> 
> Which motherboard works stable for you?
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: motherboard recommendations?

[Robert Hancock]

Jacek Poplawski wrote:
> Could you recommend motherboard which works perfecly stable with Linux?
> Last time I bought Asus K8V-X SE which was huge mistake - it has
> serious problems with AGP in Linux.
> 
> Now I think about Intel chipset - P35 or P45.
> I want Asus, Gigabyte or MSI board with heat pipe.
> But I found another issue with audio and network drivers for Asus
> boards, so maybe I will skip Asus this time?

I'd say that's generalizing an awful lot..

> Which motherboard works stable for you?

Probably not the best list for that question. These days it's fairly 
unusual to have motherboard-related problems with Linux unless it's 
something very new that hasn't been tested much yet.

The VIA AGP chipsets were just bad all around, not just in Linux..