On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 09:32:02PM +1300, Simon Hansman wrote: > Firstly the motherboard I think I'll get is a Gigabyte GA-7VTXH, it's > pretty new and seems to be a good deal. It has onboard sound (Creative > CT-5880) and onboard lan (Realtek 8100 10/100Mb) Does linux treat > onboard hardware the same as say a pci realtec lan card? Or do I need > special drivers for them?
The onboard hardware will be detected as if it was installed in a PCI slot - i.e. there is no real difference. As far as the motherboard goes, it should be fine. There are some outstanding issues with the VIA chipset(s) that may cause you problems. For example, the instability I mention below regarding the use of Athlon specific kernel optimisations is caused by issues with the VIA chipset. > The rest of the hardware is pretty generic (GeForce2, Acer CDR) so > should be fine. The nVidia drivers that provide 3D acceleration are not Free software, which introduces a few hassles if you change kernels regularly. Also, if you're using the non-free nVidia drivers, don't bother reporting Oops or other kernel problems to the linux-kernel list - they won't be interested. > And does linux treat AMD as i386? Yes. You can also use Athlon specific optimisations when compiling a kernel, but there are a few issues with using those optimisations (kernel crashes) - so the best bet is to compile for i686 at present. > I'm thinking about getting it from Dragon PC....I haven't got anything > from them before....anyone have any good/bad experiences with them? Alex is pretty good to deal with - but he can be difficult to contact at times though.
