I've been doing a lot of research here lately since I'm finally to the point where I can start ordering components for my build and I'm wanting to make absolutely certain that the hardware I have selected is going to be compatible with linux (debian particularly), since it's a fairly new board. The motherboard I'm lusting over is Asus's new Sabertooth 990fx R2.0.

I've dug around and everything I seem to find about this board playing well with linux is 50/50. Some people say it's hassle free, and others say configuring particular drivers is a pain and that the onboard nic is not yet supported??...hoping someone here will be able to clear up this confusion and give myself and others accurate answer!

Going to be running the new FX-8350 8 core vishera in this board as well...or at least I plan to at this current point in time. If this turns out to be a board that one would not recommend for linux at this current point in time does anyone have any suggestions as to what would be a board of similar quality that plays well with debian and the FX-8350??

I've continued my research and stumbled across this thread where a user is asking the same question...well not about the specific motherboard, but the same North/South bridge architecture and they are reporting that it's running in Linux Mint without issues.

What Debian version do you use? If you want to get new hardware, use at least wheezy (or better yet, testing). I have a Gigabyte F2A85X-D3H mobo and it doesnt work with the stock kernel well - the audio does not work at all, i get a kernel oops at startup.
But with the 3.6 and now 3.7 kernels from the experimental repo, i have no issues with it.

Just a recommendation for the future: People trying to help you with your hardware are usually not interested in buying that hardware, so a link to the manufacturer's website would be much more helpful to get information about the hardware in question than a link to a random hardware vendor.

Regarding your question: The board looks OK, the network controller (RTL8111F) is supported by the rtl8168 driver (but you may need a newer kernel than Debian's), but you may have issues with the unspecified "ASMedia® PCIe SATA" controller.

A few of the reviews that include "linux" have comments on it.

I was going to go with the latest and greatest since this is going to be a completely new build(I'll start a build thread when I begin putting everything together. Last package suppose to be here today!!). I'd probably give wheezy a go...


That makes perfect since! I'll remember that for next time

My main reason for installing debian is that I've worked with it in a few server atmospheres and classes. I liked how it didn't come with a bunch of other applications pre-installed...if you wanted something on the system, you had to install it. That's mainly what I'm looking for...In your opinion what distro of linux would you run?


I'll check those out! Many thanks!


What's everyone's opinion on Gentoo??...or Arch??

*EDIT
I've been reading up on Arch and I'm starting to lean more towards it...seems like it would be quite the learning experience and at the end of it I would have exactly what I wanted and nothing else....although a debian install wouldn't take near as much time...what are some of your guys' opinions??

Not exactly your setup, but the Asus Sabertooth 990FX (not R2.0!) runs very well with the FX 8150.