The support of linux for this motherboard is in its infancy, mainly because of the brand new via vt8251 southbridge. SATA drives are either not recognized by current kernels, or don't work. Regular ATA drives are recognized, but only by the ide_generic driver, disabling DMA (making everything very slow). To enable DMA, a custom-patched kernel needs to be built, with the patch from http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ide/6599 applied.

The onboard soundcard only plays for one second, and then stops. See the following thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/t388598.html
The computer won't power itself down on shutdown.

Now for the positive side: The onboard ethernet and USB connections work fine.

I wouldn't recommend this board at this moment, but I have good hopes that distributions will quickly incorporate support for it in their kernels.

As of now (07.04.2006) stil NO linux support for sata and sound with this vt8251 chipset. I do not recomend purchasing/using boards with vt8251.

Now A8V-MX sound and graphics are fully supported.
Install OS with safe mode graphics, when installed, Edit Xorg.conf to use driver 'via' and restart X.