# What is a GOOD motherboard for running Gentoo?

## AlFreed

I bought a Gigabyte 915 Series GA-81915-ME motherboard because I went to the Gigabyte web page and they said it was a Linux compatible motherboard. Well, it's not!  I can't get the on-board video, sound or NIC to work.  Everything else works fine.  I have had to install PCI board equivalents to get these devices to work.  That fills my PCI slots:-( I am therefore seeking a new motherboard that will WORK with Gentoo.  I want to use my existing hardware, if possible.  Therefore, I'm seeking a motherboard that has:

Micro ATX form factor

LGA775 CPU socket

that can accommodate

2 - 1GB dual channel DDR400/333 DIMM memory chips

2 - sata hard drives

Any advice or links to reviews are most welcome.

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## Henning Rogge

I'm using a ASUS P5N-E SLI...

no problems with sound (didn't try surround), no problems with ethernet.

I have 2 Gigabyte RAM (2x 1 GB DDR2 800) and still two RAM slots left... the 4 SATA slots work like a charm too.

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## mconfortino

Hi! I'm using an ASRock 775i65G, and works fine with Gentoo 2006.1 (2.6.18-r3)

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## bunder

if you post a lspci and a kernel config, we may be able to get you working... unless you really really do want another board.

cheers

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## madisonicus

Not doubting you, but from what I could tell everything on that Gigabyte MB should be pretty well-supported in Linux.  Did you post with the problems you were encountering?  We might be able to get you working using that board... far be it from me to prevent anyone from buying more gear though!  :Wink: 

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## Cyker

Don't look by motherboard; Look by chipset.

In my experience, anything with a VIA chipset is almost guaranteed to work. They aren't the fastest, but they don't usually give any trouble.

nVidia and recent Intel stuff is not as well supported - They're both very cagey about opensource support, and only tend to give any contributions once some poor git's already wasted time reverse-engineering their crap in the first place - But in general their stuff still works pretty well, if a bit buggily (There are still some weird issues/missing features after all this time for the nVidia NIC and SATA drivers for instance).

Luckily, there seems to be a shift towards more 'open' standards in newer chipsets, like AHCI which is an 'open' standard for SATA.

Not sure about ATI chipsets, but probably pre-AMD chipsets will be poorly supported given ATI's previous unfriendliness to Linux.

ULi is another unknown.

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## AlFreed

Thanks for all your inputs.  I learned a lot.

I went to the local computer shop and bought an Intel board that matched my existing CPU and memory

chip sets (my memory is DDR and everything coming out is DDR2 now).  Didn't want to spend the extra 

money on memory chips if I could avoid it.  Everything seems to be working now, except ASLA which I'm 

sure is just me not getting it configured right yet.  Got the board on sale:-)

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## AlFreed

Thanks again

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