Compability
 

Hi!

I have posted *ahem* some threads in this forum about hadware and such. Now I think I'm finally at the end of the road of choosing hardware for my new rig.

I just wanted to know if anyone knows whether this combination will work when assembled and whether all parts are supported by linux (although I have checked it rather thoroughly with HCL and google):

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.
Thank you very much in advance
:)

edit: really sorry for the title of this thread... Forgot to type it out and pressed the "post" button a tad too early ;)

The only thing you would likely have to worry about with that setup is the motherboard. Fortunately, the IP35 Pro is in the LQ forums HCL:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...t/3992/cat/all
It worked for the people who posted there.
EDIT: You may need the most recent video card driver from nvidia.com since you have a late model video card. I'm not sure about the lightscribe feature. Otherwise most dvd burners work afaik. Check the HCL for suggestions.

Thanks for your reply!

Here are my thoughts:

I have already checked with nvidia - and the latest driver should support it.

As for the lightscribe feature - well, I am not sure I need it at all; and since the drive does not cost more because of that feature, I'm just ignoring it for now :cool: (although I saw this: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10803 so apparently there is *some* support for it).

Yeah, I saw that HCL has an entry for ABIT IP35 Pro. Though I am not buying the "Pro" version (which has 2x PCIe16 for SLI), the plain IP35 should have precisely the same specs as the Pro one except the SLI. So I hope it will work.


Please correct me if I'm wrong though!

Do not get Abit IP35 because it comes with a Marvell NIC. Also the Abit IP35 Pro contains more hardware that is different than the IP35 that will not work well in Linux. From the other thread, I think MSI P35 Platinum is a good choice.


Some motherboards that comes with two PCIe X16 length slots does not always mean they are SLI. The other slot is usually X4.

Corsair does not make power supplies well. Actually they do not make their own power supplies. They have a contract through some power supply manufacture like FSP or Seasonic making their power supplies. I suggest either Seasonic or Enermax.

I suggest stay away from Seagate SATA drives. Western Digital GP 500 GB hard drive is cheap.

I have been using Seagate hard drives, both IDE and SATA, for some time now and I have never had any problems. I would gladly buy one again. Just curious, why do you say to stay away from Seagate?

AFAIK it's Realtek not a Marvell, judging at least from this lspci line taken from HCL:

I have a Seagate, though admittedly it's an IDE not SATA. It has worked flawlessly for the past 7+ years or so. Is there something special about the SATA-based Seagate HDDs?


Despite of that the ABIT mobo has been reported to work with linux pretty much perfectly (see HCL: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...t/3992/cat/all). Also, you mentioned something about the SATA controller on the MSI board that could pose a problem in my previous thread.

Is there *any* mobo which works flawlessly with linux and supports my setup?

Partially answering myself, will this one work?
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, P35, Socket-775, ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, ICH9, PCI-Ex16

I saw someone reported SATA-problems on that one too (although most have their SATA-media working just fine). What's up with the SATA controller support in linux anyways? Is there any specific reason for this many problems?

The reason is the same one that seems to always get us. The chipset manufacture does not produce a linux driver (as they do for windows) and they refuse to provide enough information in order for the community to build their own. We see this all the time. Until quite recently ATI video cards were shunned by linux users becuase ATIs drivers were horrid and they did not provide any information. Now ATI has released the information, so I would expect very good drivers in about a year. The reason releasing the information is so important is that without it you are really working on a black box. You know what goes into the box and what comes out, but you have no idea how it is doing whatever it is doing. What command tells it to use DVI vs VGA, etc? Basically it is like trying to drive a car with the windshield blacked out.

Yeah, it's sad but true, lazlow. I have for example always sworn to nVidia for graphic cards since I pretty much *know* they are supported. But for everything else, well... It's almost always a gamble. And this makes choosing components for a linux system a chore. Instead of thinking how well it will perform, you think: Will it be supported at all?

That is why I have posted so many threads here on LQ - just to make sure everything works perfectly. But it also seems that people have different experience with different hardware and manufacturers. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but for me (who buys a new computer only every 3 years or so and has a very limited budget with no room for experimentation) it presents an especially tough challenge. I guess I'm getting on everyone's nerves around here (and I'm truly sorry for that), but I just don't want to buy something I will be unable to use.

--

Making device drivers without the instruction set from the manufacturer is tedious and in many cases not enough to produce a fully optimized and working driver. And moreover - reverse engineering the unsupported devices takes *A LOT* of time. So you are pretty much sure that support for a totally new peripheral will always be a year or so away. That is unfortunate, no doubt about it.

There are of course areas where pretty much everything is supported. But then there are areas where it's pretty much 50/50 chance of getting something that does not work (printers, webcams etc). The reason why I asked about why SATA support in linux seemed rather poor is exactly because I wasn't aware of that SATA controllers were on the list of hardware which linux does not support well.

Oh, well. Always something to learn :)

The following Seagate problems.

* High CPU processing even when DMA is used
* Poor efficiency
* Produces a lot of heat
* Picky power supply requirements

I also like to add that Seagate drives does not park the heads well when powering down.


MasterOfTheWind, on Abit's site, it lists different hardware for both IP35 and IP35 Pro. The IP35 Pro comes with a Realtek 8110 NIC and JMicron JMB363 SATA and including Intel ICH9 SATA while the IP35 comes with a Marvell 88E8056 NIC and just Intel ICH9 SATA. Realtek NIC and Intel ICH9 SATA will work.

I stated, the MSI board contains two (2) different controllers. One is Intel ICH9 SATA (AHCI) and the other is Marvell 88SE6111. The Marvell 88SE6111 is a PATA and SATA controller.

If you are not planning to over clock, go with a different board that does not have a Marvell NIC, Marvell storage controller, JMicron SATA.

I think the reason why SATA is poor is because the SATA manufactures writes bad drivers for Windows and they are using their bad driver talents to create modules (drivers) in Linux. Kernel developers have to clean up the code dramatically to get it in its stable state. Still it is not stable. I think kernel developers need to re-write it at a different point of view just to make it reliable and stable. However, AHCI framework is good for SATA hardware that does not work yet, but I think it is a high level command interface for storage controllers and it hurts performance (latency and bandwidth).

One thing to think about is Microsoft states that Linux supports more hardware than any operating system. Sorry, I lost the link that states this.

Electro, thank you very much for your advice. I really appreciate it :)

But what about the Gigabyte board I mentioned (Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L) ?

It has:
But here JMicron will not interfere with my setup, will it? Since I have no IDE units in my rig, is that dcorrect? Does this mean that this mobo is the best choice?

I guess it does after getting a closer look at some pictures of the board from an xbitlabs review.

I do not think you need the communication ports for today and tomorrow. Linux should support these ports through USB.

You need to check the hardware on your own.

I just got the rig, assembled it and tested it with Ubuntu (since it has the best HW-detection out of the box).

I just made a couple of adjustments: Instead of Seagate I got a 500GB WD (7200 rpm) and baught a Samsung DVD-burner.

Everything works and is *amazingly* fast and responsive.

The nvidia 8800GT card was nothing the latest driver couldn't fix (although it is still listed as "unknown device" in lspci). glxgears gives me ~21000 fps at default window size.

Compiz is fast most of the time, unless you stress the system - then the animation gets a bit choppy.

Harddisks work fine. Setting AHCI-mode in BIOS was not necessary for the HDDs to work. I have not tested IDE though. Compiling is now unbelievably fast on the Raptor with 10k rpm.

Sound works fine too.

So, thanks for the help everyone :)

I disagree that Ubuntu has the best hardware detection. It is actually the Linux kernel and udev that does the work. I suggest Gentoo because it keeps up with the latest kernel releases while keeping stable.

The utility lspci uses pci.ids to match the brand ID and product ID to the name while listing the device.

That is good that your setup works.

I am sure you're right. But would like to argue that the *buntu-s are the quickest way to get everything up and running. I have no doubt though that gentoo is great (although the couple of times I tried to install it in the past, I couldn't get it to work for one reason or another).

But since we are at it - you say that gentoo merges new kernels with portage quicker than Ubuntu does with its official repos; but what about other programs? Do you know whether they are updated more frequently than in Ubuntu?

I might install gentoo on the new machine after all (since compiling is now really a blast with all those harddisk RPMs and processor power ^^).

Aha.... So *that's* where the list is at :) Always wondered whether it was hardcoded or not