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Ask Slashdot: Linux-Friendly Motherboard Manufacturers?
dotancohen writes "I am tasked with building a few Linux machines for a small office. However, many the currently available motherboards seem to be Linux-hostile. For instance, in addition to the whole UEFI issue, my last install was a three-day affair due to the motherboard reporting a Linux-supported ethernet device (the common RTL8168) while it was actually using a GbE Ethernet device that does not work with the legacy drivers and didn't even work with a test Windows 7 install until the driver disk was installed. There are no current hardware compatibility lists for Debian or Ubuntu and I've received from Asus and Gigabyte the expected reply: No official Linux support, install Windows for best experience. I even turned to the two large local computer vendors, asking if they could provide Linux-compatible machines ready to go, but neither of them would be of any help. What globally-available motherboards or motherboard manufacturers can you recommend today?"
I heard the Raspberry Pi is very Linux compatible, in fact it doesn't even run Windows.
This space for rent.
Aren't just plain Intel boards, with Intel NICs and Intel HD graphics supposed to be 'out of the box' open source friendly?
I have heard good things about system 76
Isn't the software suppose to support the hardware?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I have yet to try a motherboard which is not Linux-friendly in recent years. Every single server board I have ever tried has worked flawlessly. Every true hardware RAID controller (be it integrated or PCI-X, PCI-E, or PCI) has been supported natively, and software/hybrid/fakeraid controllers have always been supported in JBOD mode. Integrated Intel or Matrox video works fine.
Workstation/desktop boards? Aside from bluetooth, wifi, or weird video chipsets, they are supported fine. Ethernet ports used to require some tweaking (especially for Marvell controllers) but even those enjoy good support. If you want a good, fast board check out the GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB
As far as UEFI is concerned - if you run 32-bit RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux, you won't be able to boot the 32-bit disc with UEFI enabled, but why would you forgo the flat memory space of a 64-bit board now that RAM is dirt cheap? Boot 64-bit disc and it works just fine. I have UEFI enabed on my GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB and it is fully supported out of the box by OpenSUSE and both Centos and RHEL 6.3. It's more work to get full support in Linux, actually, because the Linux install Just Works(TM). To boot Windows 7, I had to make a Windows 7 USB key. It booted 64-bit Linux just fine.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
...whether a motherboard is Linux friendly on Slashdot, I would put down your hammer and step away from the computer you are trying to build.
It's all about chipsets. Figure out what chipset a given motherboard has, do a few googles, and you'll likely have your answers.
I have no problem with either of the manufacturers that you mentioned. Were you perhaps trying to do an AMD solution? I'd just stick with Intel chips and chipsets at this point in the game.
I just built an HTPC and this is what I used for my mb/cpu
MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 mATX FM2 A75 DDR3 1PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 1PCI SATA3 HDMI DVI USB3.0 Motherboard
AMD A8-5600K APU Quad Core Processor Socket FM2 3.2GHZ 4MB 100W Retail Box
works fine here right out of the box with no BIOS settings. I have Linux Mint 14 Mate running on it. The only issue I had was getting audio over HDMI but for some reason downloading and installing the AMD propitiatory drivers wouldn't install Catalyst. I had to go and install the CCC through the package manager. Reboot and audio over HDMI worked.
If you want to stick to the open source drivers and want to have sound over HDMI (if it doesn't work) try this
Edit to /etc/default/grub and add
radeon.audio=1
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
To make it look like this
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.audio=1"
Haven't tried it with my HTPC but did it with my sons laptop. Also with the laptop I had to disable two settings in the BIOS and create an EFI partition but the install of Linux Mint 14 KDE went smoothly an games seem to be running good with the open source drivers.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/ shows desktops and servers classified by vendor, distro, etc
Scientia est Potentia
due to the motherboard reporting a Linux-supported ethernet device (the common RTL8168) while it was actually using a GbE Ethernet device that does not work with the legacy drivers and didn't even work with a test Windows 7 install until the driver disk was installed.
Model and manufacturer, please! Sounds like bullshit to me.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I've used Tyan (although my last one was a dual P3), Gigabyte and Asus and I finally just switched to Intel boards, primarily to not have to ever use a Realtek (aka Realdreck) ethernet chipset again.
My Gigabyte and Asus boards used Realtek ethernet chipsets and they were total shit, both at the hardware level and at the software level. I ended up buying Intel cards and disabling/uninstalling the Realtek shit as much as possible.
Now I just buy Intel boards and get a decent Intel NIC, although Intel can be a PITA about releasing server OS drivers for what they call "consumer" NICs. The side benefit has been less weird shit and documentation in better English.
Intel boards may not be great "values" (relative to maximum features or overclockability) but they have always been super stable and worked right.
I have found that building such systems myself will end up costing a bit more because I cherry pick better components all around when less powerful options would have sufficed. If this is for an office setup and you're the one that's going to end up doing support for them then you'll want to know what's inside. If you can afford it though it would be better to pass this support issue over to someone else that's already doing desktop linux like System76 - Desktops.
You should really be getting intel NICs pretty much no matter what. Dell sells them as an additional cost for a reason. The reason being broadcom sucks.
If Microsoft demands it, motherboard makers will fall in line in order to stay in business.
This probably also signals the beginning of the end of Microsoft.
Mighty empires always fall.
There's wholesale motherboards and retail motherboards. Wholesale motherboards are mostly destined for name-brand computers where MS-Windows will be pre-bundled.
However, when you buy retail, I'd venture that a lot of those motherboards have to be Linux-friendly, because Windows doesn't come "free" with them the way it does with mass-market computers and therefore I'd expect a much higher percentage of such motherboards to be destined for non-Windows machines, and since I have grave doubts about them becoming Apple machines, that leaves Linux as pretty much the largest market left.
In any event, so far Asus, Shuttle, MSI and BioStar have all worked fairly well for me. Occasionally an integrated peripheral will be problematic, but as far as it goes, I really wouldn't expect top-of-the-line integrated peripheral support from a retail mobo even on Windows. Especially considering what the Windows device driver development process has become.
According to Phoronix, the Intel DZ77GA-70K and the ECS Golden Board Z77H2-A2X are fine for Linux. It is implied that almost any motherboard with the Intel Z77 chip set should be OK for linux. They did a longer follow-up review on the ECS Z77H2-A2X Ultimate Golden Edition Extreme with linux.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I think you confuse Linux with Ubuntu.
how the hell do you make such a huge mountain out of a molehill?
AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Realtech, VIA
all have been supported in linux as system chipsets for a long fucking time, where the hell are you getting these crackhead mobos you speak of?
I've had several ASUS motherboards that work fine. My current one is the M5A97 R2.0 (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A97_R20/).
They also work with Debian, Slackware, and Ubuntu (as long as you're not working with too old a kernel).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've bought about 2 dozen Asus AMD motherboards, and they all work fine in Linux.
Consider yourself fortunate.
ASUS doesn't consider Linux support a priority, and goes out of their way to stymie support for their motherboards. Note that there is *still* no resolution for this issue: the current patch is a hack that "kind of" works, which is the best that can be expected without a datasheet.
Typical motherboard tech specs don't list the SMBus/IO chipsets. So, if you want to ensure your motherboard will have support in Linux, you have to do ridiculous thngs like going online and searching for a high-res photo of the motherboard and hoping you can read the designation screenprinted on the chip (and then checking support status on the lm-sensors site). Or you could try to contact sales support with your technical questions, but that's just *painful*.
So, while it is ASUS' right to restrict their market however they like (including blocking Linux support for their motherboards), it is important to ensure the Linux using subset of the population is aware of ASUS' stance on Linux support—ASUS does not care about your ability to use Linux on their hardware.
I agree, I've had the best experiences with supermicro. Their OS compatability list is more than sufficient (they don't list Debian, but they cover enough distros that it doesn't matter). For one recent purchase, the list was sufficiently detailed to indicate that a motherboard I'd selected was compatible with FreeBSD 9.0, except the raid controller, which was supported by 8.2 (the driver missed the release window for the 9.0 kernel, but was trivial to compile). Aside from having to compile that one driver, I've never had any compatibility troubles with their motherboards with either Linux or BSD (haven't tried windows). I've also never had one fail (having used a few dozen over the last decade), so can't really comment on their warranty services.
For workstations, I mostly use Asus boards. They tend to have more bells and whistles and also have worked really well for me. I have used Intel boards, and can confirm they are also great but generally fall behind Asus and Supermicro on one end or the other (particularly considering their prices).
Except for laptops and smaller, I generally only buy boards that supprt ECC, that probably weeds out most of the crappy stuff on the market.
As for EFI, I haven't used it on a server or workstation yet, but I have used it on a laptop with an older bios that doesn't have the secure booting crap, or at least it's not enabled. From what I've seen its an ugly mess. Some cool ideas, but really lacking solid userfriendly tools. If you do a fresh install, it might not be too bad. I've only play with converting legacy bios installations to UEFI with and without GPT. For the most part, you can't configure/install the key components for EFI booting on a running system that was booted in legacy mode. The machines I've played with only support net booting with legacy bios (I typically net boot for installs and repair).
Converting a linux install without rewriting the entire disk is actually not too dificult, if you do it just right. However, don't try it unless you are comfortable with loosing the data on the disk. Windows seems to be a lot more finicky about EFI. For one, it will only boot with GPT partition tables (my bios and the linux kernel don't seem to mind using either GPT or legacy tables). Can't say I care enough about windows to have put in the effort to get the conversion to work.
Anyway, EFI is still surmountable, but life is easier if you avoid it and get a friendly board that still supports legacy booting.
I've got a couple of PCs with the Asus P8Z68-V LX running 64-bit CentOS 6.3 and/or Ubuntu 12.04 without any issues at all. Newegg has them for $80 and they support 32GB RAM, SATA 3, USB 3 and have decent onboard graphics (with plenty of slots for beefier cards). I don't see anything in this price range that a) works 100% with Linux and b) has good specs like this MB.
One nice thing - the BIOS is dead easy to upgrade - none of this Windows-only (or DOS-on-a-floppy!) rubbish: there's a built in filestore navigator in the BIOS and it picks up a .ROM file off a USB stick without any problems. And, yes, Asus do BIOS updates even for MBs like these which aren't that new or anywhere near the top of their range.
It should be noted that it's an LGA 1155/Z68 MB, which may or may not work with Ivy Bridge CPUs (I used a "lowly" i7 2600 Sandy Bridge in mine). I'm sure there must be an Asus equivalent to this MB that does.
I might be late with this, but if you are considering ASUS motherboards, this can help:
http://www.asus.com/websites/global/aboutasus/OS/Linux.pdf