I am going to assemble a new machine. Please tell me about the brand and model name of motherboard (should have onboard sound+vga+lan) and processor which can be taken in these days. Please recommend those motherboards which will not offer much trouble sencing its onboard lan, sound or vga during installing Linux.

It is for my personal use and not for massive use. Presently using a P-III 500MHz machine and want to say it bye bye.

Already read the entries at the LQ Hardware Compatibility List?

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Yes, HCL also reading but still not decided what to buy, a 32 bit or go for 64 bit, Intel or AMD? confused. any suggestion?

I recently (nah, may 2006) bought a new computer with Biostar CRU51-M9 (probably same as 6100-M9) and AMD64 processor.
No problems found with Ubuntu Dapper (after installation of NVidia drivers for video card). There are some problems with Slackware (short freezes in both GUI and normal terminal) and WinXP (screen blanks randomly like screen saver kicks in).
I'm now mostly using the 32bit Ubuntu Dapper on it.

The cheapest computer setup is AMD. On the Intel side, on-board graphics sucks. Below are all AMD using AM2 socket.
GIGABYTE GA-M51GM-S2G (microATX)
GIGABYTE GA-M55plus-S3G (ATX)
ABIT NF-M2 nView (microATX)

I recommend spend the money on a good power supply like a Seasonic model S12 or Enermax. Do not buy computer chassis with power supplies. Buy computer cases with out power supplies instead. I recommend using ECC memory when selecting a multi-core processor. I still recommend using ECC memory for single processor system to have very reliable and stable computer. Though people disagree with me.

I do not recommend motherboards from Biostar, MSI, and ASUS. You get what you paid for with Biostar motherboards. MSI is the same as Biostar. ASUS provides poor and incomplete manuals. It is a luck of the draw to have a fully working ASUS motherboard. With ASUS motherboards you have to guess what SATA port is 1, 2, 3, 4, etc and you have to guess where the power and reset buttons are. Same goes true with power LED and hard drive LED indicators.

I suggest using 32-bit Linux distributions unless you only work with multimedia files. Only multimedia programs that are programmed with 64-bit instructions gets the most boost in performance while general applications gets a little performance or a performance penalty. Using distributions that mixes 32-bit and 64-bit programs will be annoying to work with because you have to switch between 32-bit and 64-bit libraries.

Very nice help for me. From your recommendation, I am now considering for a change from Intel to AMD. And Gigabyte GIGABYTE GA-M55plus-S3G (ATX) is really a good one for me (visited gigabyte web site).

Another query from my end. Should I go for a Dual core with lower clock speed or Single core with higher clock speed? Also if you please let me know the difference between AM2 and 939 socket. AMD A64 X2 4200 OEM is a 939 socket processor and AMD A64 X2 4200 AM2 RETAIL is a AM2 socket processor. Which should I consider and why? I have visited the AMD site and not much help there. If you please tell me what should I buy.

reards
anindyanuri

i use +4200, it may just be a matter of configuraion, but my mates 939 is slower for sure, not by much, but it is. AM2 is the way of the future, but as im finding out, i was having less problems with my semi old cpu/chipset and expect to until things catch up a bit.

For decent performance on an integrated graphics chipset, I suggest processors with at least 1 MB of cache. Linux works better with multiple processors than using one processor. If you are going to do a lot of video encoding and sound encoding, a single processor system is better. Though, if you select a dual-core processor correctly, it should perform just about the same as single processor systems. Just do not use threading when encoding and decoding video and sound because quality will worsen.

AM2 socket processors are tricky when selecting a desire chip. AMD did not designed their AM2 socket processors correctly to handle all DDR2 frequencies. You have to do some homework on what model can handle a real DDR2-800. If you do not, the real spec will be DDR2-667 or little less than DDR2-800. For graphics, I suggest giving as much bandwidth as possible, so a real DDR2-800 should be used.