Linux compatible performance AMD board?

I am just about to give this nForce2 board to the wife to play with in Windows. It's just not linux friendly at-all. First I spent a week (with Slack) trying to get the IDE controller to act right. I was getting 3mb/s disk reads . After a hundred other hard drive tweaks and tests, I decided to compile 2.4.22 and see what happens. Much better now @ 50mb/s. But, the next issue I had planned to work on was the onboard sound only being able to play sound from one app at a time; i.e. if xmms is playing mp3's, NO sound from anything else. I already searched around quite a bit and have seen no solution for this other than nvidia releasing the code for their drivers or them actually making one that WORKS. After compiling 2.4.22 I have no sound at all. I got Slack working with the sound (half-assed anyway) on like 10 installs and several kernel compiles so I don't think I missed anything, but it don't work. Also, both onboard ethernet ports seem to not work anymore and I followed the same process for those as well (writing to you from windows )

So, my question is: Do any of you have a comparable board to the ASUS A7N8X deluxe that actually works properly? Preferrably doesn't need closed source drivers? Because if you do, I am going shopping. I was reading that the KT400 chipset is more linux compatible like the Soyo dragon. All of the hardware supposedly plays well with linux, but I want to hear it from you users out there.

I already have a thread going in networking on the ethernet prbs, so if you happen to have a suggestion post there please.

This is more just a "what to buy before I throw the box through a wall" post.

edit: I know the nforce still beats the KT400 in speed, so another route might be to get a standalone soundcard (audigy) and a network card. What do you think? One advantage to getting another mobo though, is I can build another computer from the leftovers

you may need to install alsa. It mix sound and allow several application use sound at the same time.

I bought a smiliar PC for my friend and have some troubles with a stupid creative optical mouse and a modem that need a $15 driver. Here I use an old PC with RH and no problem at all. And it run really fast and stable so I always perfer linux.
(I can only recommend standard hardware for linux)

I think most hardware problem would be solved in the next release of big distro like Mandrake or redhat. If the hardware company don't get us good drivers/modules, it would take awhile to make the OS support it.

"I think most hardware problem would be solved in the next release of big distro like Mandrake or redhat. If the hardware company don't get us good drivers/modules, it would take awhile to make the OS support it."

Well thats the problem. nVidia is not very forthcomming about their hardware/drivers so we are suffering from it with Linux. From the 100's of posts I have all read over the net regarding sound (some wayyyy over my head) there is no fix other than nvidia releasing some decent drivers. 2.6 isn't going to solve the sound issues either from what I understand. I haven't even attempted to get agp working properly yet. It too seems to be a lost cause unless you are using an nVidia vid card. I probably spent 80 hours over the last 10 days researching and working on these issues and it doesn't look good.

I will have internet again, but there will always be half-assed sound and crappy 3D graphics regardless. nVidia MAY release decent drivers for audio, but I don't expect them to ever include support for my ATI vid card.

Sorry for can't recommend a good mother board. I also want to know if there are any good and economic mother board which work well in linux as well. My sister's PC is too old.