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From: kid on 1 Apr 2008 21:08 Can someone help me find a linux compatible motherboard? It needs to be amd x2 because I already have the processer. Thanks in advance -- kid -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
From: Aragorn on 2 Apr 2008 04:26 kid wrote: > Can someone help me find a linux compatible motherboard? It needs to be > amd x2 because I already have the processer. Most motherboards - for AMD or Intel /x86-32/64/ processors - are supported by the stock Linux kernel, albeit that you /may/ not have all functionality available under GNU/Linux without any proprietary software, e.g. with regard to hardware monitoring, etc. For AMD processors, you will find motherboards with just about every chipset available, except for Intel's chipsets, of course. I personally recommend something that uses either the nVidia nForce chipset or an ATi/AMD chipset. Most modern motherboards come with either one, two or even three on-board NICs. In a motherboard with the nForce chipset, you'd typically need the /forcedeth/ driver for that, which comes with the stock Linux kernel. I don't have any experience with other chipsets though, but typically the NICs will be supported by any of the stock 3Com, Broadcom, Realtek or Marvell drivers. IDE/PATA and SATA controllers are to my knowledge supported on just about every motherboard. The trickiest thing is when you buy a motherboard with on-board graphics and/or sound. Many motherboards now have an Azalia codec on-board, which is supported by the Intel HDA (High Definition Audio) ALSA driver. For graphics, I personally prefer a plug-in PCIe or AGP card; it gives you more options to choose from and you're not tied to the manufacturer's choices. I personally have two AMD-based machines running GNU/Linux right now, i.e. this one here, which has a slightly older Asus motherboard with a 32-bit AMD Athlon XP processor, and another, heavier one - which is still in the process of being set up with Xen and several Gentoo installations - which has a Tyan motherboard with two second-generation dualcore AMD HE-type Opterons. Tyan is professional stuff but is quite pricy and does often come with some proprietary chipsets. Supermicro and Iwill are also pretty professional boards, but just as with Tyan you may count on a serious laceration to your piggybank. ;-) For a consumergrade motherboard, I think you can't go wrong with any of the popular MSI or Asus boards. Luckily enough, most motherboard and peripheral manufacturers have started to realize that Crimosoft is not the only player in town and that they would be missing out on a lot of revenue if they were to support Crimosoft only. Sadly enough, this is still not entirely the case for the vendors of pre-assembled desktop and laptop computers, but we're getting there. ;-) By the way, you may also expect to see incredible GNU/Linux performance - likewise for FreeBSD and siblings - from any of the "Vista-ready"-labeled boards given that Vista apparently needs mainframe power for regular PC performance, although there may of course always be a chance that some of the on-board stuff requires evil proprietary software. You could then of course still use the board with plug-in cards, provided that enough PCI/PCI-X/PCIe slots are available, but then you'd be wasting your money on such a motherboard. Lastly, Google is your friend. If you're interested in a motherboard, check out the chipsets, and in the event of doubt, just enter the name of the chipset and "+ Linux" in the Google search field. You're guaranteed to get loads of hits with reports on success or failure and what driver it needs. A typical Linux distribution comes with a modularly built kernel, module autoloading enabled and all modules compiled and installed on your hard disk, so upon installation and boot, the kernel will detect what hardware you have and will load the appropriate driver for it. Graphics support is of course another matter as this often requires proprietary video drivers from nVidia or ATi, and although the driver itself runs in kernelspace, the graphical environment itself does not, unlike in Windows - in GNU/Linux, the GUI runs in userspace and is thus just another application running atop of the operating system. Typically however, 2D graphics are supported out-of-the-box with the standard FOSS drivers and/or the generic framebuffer driver, and installing a proprietary 3D-capable driver is not that hard. While there still is and always will be proprietary hardware - most of it designed for proprietary hardware platforms designed for vendor-specific (and typically UNIX-based) operating systems such as the ones from Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, SGI or IBM, all of which can also run GNU/Linux with varying degrees of usability, as well as there is some "we support Crimosoft only"-persistence - most hardware out on the market today either uses quite common and thus broadly supported chipsets or may already have full chipset-specific support in the stock Linux kernel. GNU/Linux is a highly mature and professional-grade operating system - and has already been that for at least a decade - and supports more hardware out-of-the-box than Windows (ever) does. In fact, given the reports of Vista woes even on allegedly Vista-ready hardware, I'd say that it's actually easier to find hardware that is not supported in Windows than it is to find hardware that is not supported in GNU/Linux. ;-) -- Aragorn (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
From: kid on 2 Apr 2008 08:32 On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:26:59 +0200, Aragorn wrote: > > > For AMD processors, you will find motherboards with just about every chipset > available, except for Intel's chipsets, of course. I personally recommend > something that uses either the nVidia nForce chipset or an ATi/AMD chipset. > > ,,,,,,,,,,,clip.......................... Thank you very much -- kid -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
From: General Schvantzkopf on 2 Apr 2008 09:30 On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:32:59 +0000, kid wrote: > On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:26:59 +0200, Aragorn wrote: > > >> >> For AMD processors, you will find motherboards with just about every >> chipset available, except for Intel's chipsets, of course. I >> personally recommend something that uses either the nVidia nForce >> chipset or an ATi/AMD chipset. >> >> ,,,,,,,,,,,clip.......................... > > Thank you very much > > -- > kid Newegg has lots of reviews for every motherboard they sell, you should search for the word Linux in the reviews of motherboards that look good to you. Linux users are pretty good about posting their experiences so you will find lots of motherboards that have Linux reviews. BTW when you do build your system I would encourage you, and everyone else, to post a detailed review on Newegg or some similar site including any problems and workarounds that you find.
From: Blattus Slafaly ‰ ⁜ ☺ ♞ on 3 Apr 2008 08:42
kid wrote: > Can someone help me find a linux compatible motherboard? It needs to be > amd x2 because I already have the processer. > > Thanks in advance > > Avoid onboard devices like built in ethernet, half modems, video, IrD, bluetooth, WIFI and stuff like that. The motherboard drivers CD usually don't have Linux drivers. Get add on cards that Linux supports. -- Blattus Slafaly ف ٣ :) ⅞ |