Hello all,

Can any of you recommend a good motherboard that works under linux? I am looking preferrably for a motherboard that has integrated Audio and Video. Here's my config:

AMD64 2800+ CPU, Socket 754
256MB DDR PC2700 Kingston RAM
Maxtor 80GB ATA HDD

I want the MB to have SATA disk support as well, although I am not planning to use it as of now, but for future. I do not have any great graphics requirements so any integrated graphics card that works perfectly under Linux is fine with me. Any Suggestions?

Thanks.

Welcome to LQ!

I prefer the larger, more well-known vendors. I've been building
PCs only about 8 years, but never have problems using them.

Gigabyte K8VM800M should work well for you. It has onboard video,
audio, and LAN. This board is a VIA chipset board, southbridge is a
VT8237, a well-supported chipset in *nix. I found one person using
FC3 with this board, and he never mentioned a problem with chipset
issues (once he got the SATA drive recognized -- his problem, not a
problem of the OS).

It's available now on NewEgg for less than $60 USD.
You should put your location in your LQ UserCP.

Thanks Chinaman for your response.

But I have read that the VIA K8M800 comes with integrated S3 Unichrome graphics, and I have read that the card is currently supported with the VESA driver Which means poor refresh rates. Although there is a unichrome devel support on sourceforge. So atleast I can hope to get good drivers may be some-time later.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will check this out with the HW suppliers around town.

If you don't want to chance that board, go to the websites of Asus, MSI, and any other manufacturer you would consider. Look at the boards they have with all the intergrated parts you want, then check the LQ HCL and also Google <Linux> to see what others say about those boards.

You stated in your first post, "I do not have any great graphics requirements." If you don't need 3D then VESA will be great for you, and I think from some posts I read, that others have got that chipset to work okay. What I couldn't find was the actual chipset so I could check for it in some kernels.

If you're interested, search LQ and there is a guy who has that mobo and he could perhaps give you his /sbin/lspci output and we could check kernel support.

You will not find a good a good motherboard that has intergrated graphics for AMD Athlon64 processors at this time. I suggest VIA K8T800 Pro, but I rather push people towards the 939 socket version because it has a longer life. The 754 socket has a short life. When the M2 socket comes out, the 754 socket will be history. nVidia has just made an intergrated graphics chipset version but only few is out right now. I do not recommend ATI because the software support history really sucks. Then you just need to get a video graphis card. I suggest GeForce6 6200 to save on money.

I suggest using either Western Digital or Hitachi hard drives instead of Maxtor and Seagate because the speed is quite noticable in desktop and server environments. Hitachi's T series SATA hard drives are very fast when accessing files. However, I still recommend having a PATA around to first install Linux and then copy the files to the SATA drive.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

I finally ended up with a Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M Board that has the VIA K8M800 chipset. It turned out that I had very few options than I had expected. I stay in Bangalore, India. And the HW sellers here know very little about chipsets and Linux support. It all sounds gibberish to them. Typically they carry around 1 or 2 boards for each kind of processor (some of them don't carry any AMD processors). So finally after going around a few shops I had choice between an ASUS board with SiS chipset (that I never got to see), MSI K8MM-V and the GigaByte board. Finally settled for the GigaByte board. Thanks Chinaman for your suggestion!! Still haven't installed Linux on it, will be doing it shortly.

I hope everything works okay for you. I'm not familiar with that video chip,
but if you can't get it detected, post back and we'll help you.

I'm building a comp here to use while we're in the States. I opted for an
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ ClawHammer 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor,
which has a 1M L2 cache, rather than the more expensive Socket 939 with
512K L2 cache. The board I chose is an Asus K8V-X VIA K8T800. The first
one came and is bad, so I'm waiting for the replacement.

In China if I get a bad board, I call the store and they send another one to
my house (during the first year). I bought this one from NewEgg, and even
though it was retail, I had to call Asus. Now their RMA process is absolutely
horrible. However, NewEgg will accept the Asus RMA # and refund or give
me a replacement.

I don't know how well this setup is going to work ... it's only the second
64-bit box I've built. I'll be posting the results to the LQ HCL, so if anyone
is interested, they can go there later.

I recommend people buy 939 socket motherboards if they are buying an AMD Athlon64 processor. This is because socket 754 is state as economy or low end. Socket 754 will also be obsolete by next year when the M2 socket comes out. If you are getting a 754 socket motherboard, get the fastest processor.

I do not recommend buying a motherboard with on-board video because it does decrease the performance of the system from the lack of memory bandwidth.

The 939 socket chips are not expensive in my country (USA). I can get a 939 socket system with a GB of ECC memory and an Athlon64 X2 for less than 700 US dollars.

Socket 939 boards and Processors are damn costly in India right now and I can't afford them.

Ok, I have installed Mandrake 10.0 with 2.6.3 kernel. Because that was the only distro for which I had 9 CD-s including contrib packages. Though I'd prefer Gentoo. The graphics works ok with the VESA driver, although the refresh rate is poor, its not really bad... Its workable on my 17'' monitor. Although I would like to get higher refresh rates in future... but its ok for now. The on-board VIA 8233 audio works but the quality is bad. I donno if its the driver or the HW. USB 2.0 controller is properly recognised and works perfectly with ehci drivers! on-board LAN is recognized under linux and can be put into promiscuious mode ... So overall this is not a bad board for running linux. But I am looking forward to the Unichrome project for better graphics support in the future.