I had only one problem with this motherboard, that being the 3COM on-board LAN controller. It is quite possible, however, that newer kernels support it. I had an old PCI ethernet card laying around, so I didn't even bother looking for the driver. It's a really nice board, I really like the BIOS setup utility and some of the monitoring software that comes with it (for Windows, of course).

Installation was a cinch with the 2.6.6 kernel. Everything was included in the kernel, with no need for outside drivers (regarding sound,nic,usb) Not sure about the firewire/onboard raid controller support, but most likely works as well.

This was pretty easy to set up as far as hardware detection goes.

The onboard sound (AC97 SoundMAX, uses the i810_audio and ac97_codec modules) was automatically detected and works out of the box (but the coaxial digital out does not).

The onboard gigabit LAN (3Com 3C940) sort-of works. It uses the "SysKonnect 98xx Gigabit" driver (as configured in redhat-config-network), aka the sk98lin module. The first time I installed linux I tried using the 3c2000 driver from ASUS's website, and after much tweaking it worked, but not well (like if i looked at it the wrong way it would become inactive). So I did a little research, and you can use the SysKonnect 98xx driver with no problem, so I "wiped out" all the 3com module/driver stuff and started clean with redhat-config-network and set it up using the "SysKonnect 98xx Gigabit" driver. Works great!

Well I don't have any firewire devices, but the controller is detected, so I can only assume it works. All 8 USB ports (4 on the mobo, then 4 ports for front USB) work fine. The parallel port also works (yes, I'm still using a parallel port printer, but it's laser and works great with Linux), and I assume the serial port works as well. All 4 IDE channels are detected, but I don't have anything set up in raid. I don't know about the SATA channels either.

So in conclusion, this board works great with linux. Once I figured out the network thing (I still don't know why Anaconda didn't auto-detect it during setup) it has been working great.

Now for my non-linux related review of the board. For the first month or so I had my P4 2.6C overclocked to 3.12GHz just fine (the CPU was the limiting factor), for O/C'ing, this board is excellent. Screw up your settings? No more shorting pins to clear the BIOS, just reboot! The Memory enhancement mode works well, except it is disabled if your FSB speed is over 200MHz (really 800MHz). Gigabit LAN, and all the onboard ports are excellent. For the $120 I paid back in November '03 for this board, I couldn't be more happier.

the USB devices are flacky. sometimes they will work, other times they will not. they seem to always work during install, but after you are out of the GUI based install they may or may not work.

Same goes for the onboard NIC. the 3com is not working yet, and i have had limited luck getting the drivers to install properly from the asus site.

as for the PCI slots are NOT working at properly either. the OS is detecting my 3com 3c905 NIC, but not able to communicate with it properly, thus not allowing it to pull a DHCP or work with a static IP.

still troubleshooting this issue.

the sound works fine right out of the base install as does the detection and use of the sATA.