I had no trouble during the install with Fedora Core 2, which comes by default with kernel linux-2.6.5-1.358. The install-everything install was 6.5 GB, and it's a feature rich working environment.

For high end videogame performance there are issues. FC2 by default has 4k stacks for threading performance, but this is incompatible with the binary driver from Nvidia:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
which I wanted, so I got the 8k stacks kernel from
http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc2-kernel-i686.php
and the drivers from Nvidia. They installed with no problems from the instructions.

UT2004 does really well with this setup. Much better than the identical hardware does under a commercial OS (I have 2).

The onboard SATA on this M/B does not work with 2.6.5 kernels, but some have reported success with 2.6.5. Everything else detects and works just fine.

I didn't have any of these issues with Mandrake 9.2 community, which I installed previously, so I'll blame FC2 for the bumps and give this product a 9.

Performance is good under Linux. I have tried several kernel versions (2.4.26, 2.4.27, 2.6.7, 2.6.8-rc2, 2.6.8-rc3, 2.6.8-rc4). Only problem I have found is that if I use my Ati Radeon 9700 with agp 8x setting enabled, system becomes unstable (usually screen freezes and system stops responding when using opengl application). Problem disappears when setting is swithed to agp 4x in bios. In Windows it works with agp 8x setting with no problems, so it is possible to find solution (maybe kernel patch or ati driver patch). Ati driver 3.9.0 works with patch, 3.11 works without Ati driver patch. I haven't tested sata because I don't have any sata drives. Ati drivers are proprietary, download from http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html .

Other hardware:
Athlon XP 2600+ (barton)
Ati Radeon 9700 128 mb (Connect3d)
512 Mb ddr 333 memory(NOT any brand,generic)
Hercules Game theater XP(Onboard sound disabled)
+ide CD and HDDs