Ask Slashdot: Linux-Friendly Desktop x86 Motherboard Manufacturers? 294
storkus writes: The release of Haswell-E and a price drop on Devil's Canyon has made me itch for a PC upgrade. However, looking around I discovered a pair of horror stories on Phoronix about the difficulties of using Linux on a multitude of motherboards. My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who's left and are they any good? I'd like to build a (probably dual-boot, but don't know for sure) gaming and 'other' high-end machine with one of the above chips, so we're talking Z97 or X99; however, these stories seem to point to the problems being Windows-isms in the BIOS/UEFI structures rather than actual hardware incompatibility, combined with a lousy attitude (despite the Steam Linux distro being under development).
Intel (Score:5, Informative)
They're about as vanilla as it's possible to get, which is what you have to do to get anything working with minimal kernel module hacking.
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If I still had mod points, you'd get a +1. Intel motherboards are great. They're nothing fancy pants, but everything that's on them is solid and well supported.
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Caveat that Atoms with PowerVR graphics are to be avoided. We knew that.
But since the summary is about Haswell, one can assume Intel HD/Iris graphics.
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Re:Intel (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny that. I'm typing this on a D2700MUD with an Nvidia PCI GT620 card in it - at 1920x1080.
Just because they are not easy to find doesn't mean they don't exist.
Sadly, they are getting out of the business (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel is closing down their motherboard lines. It pisses me off since they were all I'd buy in the past, but they aren't going to be an option for much longer :(.
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+1 for this, my current motherboard is an Intel and if I had the money I would upgrade to a Core series chip (instead of the Core 2 Duo I have now) with an Intel board.
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Intel is closing down their motherboard lines. It pisses me off since they were all I'd buy in the past, but they aren't going to be an option for much longer :(.
Only desktop boards. You want an intel server board!
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Intel MB may be fine, but stay away from the wireless 7260 series, they are utter crap and only work mostly with the very latest firmware and driver/kernel version.
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They're about as vanilla as it's possible to get, which is what you have to do to get anything working with minimal kernel module hacking.
This is generally true, any Intel CPU using board is going to be mostly Intel silicon at the center, with other vendors twiddling around a bit with audio chipsets(unfortunately, as with AC 97 before it, there are...multiple creative ways...to be 'compatible' with Intel's "HD Audio" standard), NICs, extra USB or SATA controllers, and whatnot. Intel usually keeps it simple, stupid(barring the push for UEFI; but now that that's industry-wide you just pick your poison) and tends not to use really dire onboard j
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The Intel bits are vanilla, but even Intel don't make all the components on the board. I've got an Intel DX79SR, and its USB3 controller is by Renesas (formerly NEC). The USB3 controller has a firmware bug (that pauses the machine for a minute during every boot), which can be fixed by updating its firmware. The firmware can only be updated from Windows -- not just DOS but real Windows. I downloaded one of those (surely hooky) Windows rescue CDs, but even then the firmware updater refused to run, saying that
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Absolutely. Intel for linux hands down. I have never had any problems from workstations to servers with intel motherboards.
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Except that Intel is tainted.
Phoronix = fail (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the OSNews of the 21st Century.
Buy Gigabyte, their shit is rock solid.
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There's a reason I don't buy Gigabyte. Out of all the boards I've bought and systems I've built, Gigabyte have had the greatest chance of just plain not working, working poorly, or having some other annoyance that gets in the way.
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I've had issues with Gigabyte products in the past - but never with ASRock or Asus. I have no idea why people are saying ASRock/Asus are out. I have a relatively new Sandy Bridge system with UEFI and no issues, and also have a headless Haswell system with UEFI and both are rock solid. Neither system has had a working Windows partition in a year or two (well, in the case of the Haswell, it has NEVER seen Windows.)
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I just bought a brand new Asus Ultrabook and installed gentoo with few if any problems. Lots of documentation on the Arch Linux and Ubuntu sites related to my laptop model were really helpful. The boot was a small pain but really only took a few hours to sort. If you're not willing to spend a few hours sorting something out, Linux on the desktop probably isn't for you anyways. I had it fully up and running in about a week with no tinkering for Suspend/Resume, Touchscreen support, or Audio, which were pa
MSI Claims SteamOS compatibility with X99 (Score:5, Informative)
MSI X99 boards at least claim SteamOS compatibility out of the box.
In my books that should mean Linux works.
Re:MSI Claims SteamOS compatibility with X99 (Score:5, Informative)
Also looked at their BIOS Files. Looks like normal ZIP which contains the file that needs to be put to the pen driver for the UEFI self-update to work from the BIOS itself. No Windows required.
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Though the AsRock board I bought is able to download the BIOS upgrade itself from within the BIOS, so that works regardless the OS. (Also it has a switch for choosing from two BIOS flash regions, so it should be pretty safe.)
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My Asus Sabertooth Z87 can do the same.
I would actually expect this to be standard in everything now, except maybe the very cheapest boards.
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I apparently missed that part. So far, this is the single most useful comment on this, THANK YOU!!!
Self-extracting EXEs (Score:5, Interesting)
Some archive apps like WinRAR can extract files from self-extracting EXE files. Also look around for other softwares that can do this.
In some cases a command line option will allow the EXE to be extracted but not installed - but you have to do some digging.
Of course - the above is provided that you have at least one Windows machine around.
Also check around on the Motherboard manufacturer site - sometimes they offer both an EXE and a ZIP archive, and if nothing else contact their support. If nobody pesters them about the problem then they don't care.
And finally - also look at Tyan and Supermicro for motherboard, even though their target is server motherboards they may have some suitable motherboards for you.
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That's because a self-extracting zip file is actually still a valid zip file, albeit with a bit of junk at the start. Just rename to .zip and most archive utilities can cope fine.
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False. According to the APPNOTE, a ".ZIP file is correctly identified by the presence of an end of central directory record which is located at the end of the archive structure".
This central directory record contains an offset into the zip file where the individual files begin. Thus a perfectly valid zip file can contain arbitrary junk data (including a self-extraction stub) at the beginning of a file, as long as the offsets in the directory records are correct.
Just because zip files usually start with "P
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Why would anyone have a windows machine around? My tribe does not support monsters nor evil doers. Freedom insists that I run Linux. Freedom is my buddy and you should get to know about Freedom.
I've been using Linux as my primary OS for more than 10 years, and I don't look back. That doesn't mean, though, that I don't have a Windows machines for those few times I need one -- depending on Fedex (nee Kinkos) is a real time waste. But I don't buy new -- the lease-return used computers are quite inexpensive and work for my few needs. (WINE isn't an answer, and I'm not a fan of virtual machines, if I had a CD and a license, the last being more expensive than a cheap used computer.)
Still, I have to e
Re:Self-extracting EXEs (Score:5, Insightful)
LibreOffice does about 98 percent of what I need to service my clients, but that last five percent has to be handled, too
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Whatever rocks your boat and can allow the necessary tool to work.
BIOS upgrades in general sucks, some more than others.
Sensationalism? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is setting a bunch of flags really a horror story? Really? How is this possible if you are BUILDING a computer?
Re:Sensationalism? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because a few things were yanked out of my submission, as usual for headlines. As shown in the Phoronix stories, and (here's one part that was deleted) by Googling around further, a bigger problem is that the mobo manufacturers simply don't give a flying f**k about anything other than winblows: Gigabyte and Asus both say, "We don't support Linux, use windows"--yes, really, read the story--and there was some MSI business before, but maybe that's getting better since they offer official Steam support (we'll see).
I didn't know AsRock and AsusTek were separate companies now: perhaps their new X99-WS, while not an overclocker, is better supported as many workstations run Linux or Solaris.
I'm surprised so many guys didn't know Intel isn't making boards anymore, but I didn't know they're (apparently?) still available. Whether with Z97 or X99 (or later) is a big question, though.
Also deleted from my submission is that I specifically stated that I don't expect all the hardware to work on something so new, but I expect the important parts will: rather, that the M$-isms in the BIOS deliberately interfere with Linux. I'm very familiar with this, as I have a 7 year old laptop that, to this day, I cannot install any of the BSD's to: first the bootloaders died, and now the kernels die in early boot, so it's a little better, but still. Oh, and it likes LILO better than GRUB.
So, is this sensationalistic? No, I don't think so. And I haven't been paid for any of this (in fact, I'm going to max out a credit card or two to pay for this). But I really don't want to repeat all the pain others have gone through. This isn't my first build, and definitely not my first Linux install, but this is the newest hardware that I've used in almost 2 decades. (Usually I just take hand-me-downs on the cheap--as usual, what works like shit in winblows works fine in Linux!) I want a machine for gaming, compiling, GIMPing, etc--for once, I'd like some top end screaming hardware (since I'll never be able to afford Haswell-EX with its 20 cores!). The last thing I need is the manufacturers themselves deliberately creating road blocks!
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There is a difference between "do not support Linux" and Linus will not work.
I assume the mfg's legal department strongly suggested that they not officially support Linux, since that would lead to having to specify precisely what not supporting Linux means, which distributions, etc.
Linux is still a small enough market that it is not work it to mug's to put together a customer support team to support all the configurations people will try to come up with using Linux.
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Re:Sensationalism? (Score:4, Interesting)
"We don't support Linux, use windows"
Because Linux users are a pain in the ass.
You can find a bugzilla from about five years back where I had a problem with the built-in NIC on an ASUS mobo corrupting memory. Several others had the same problem on the same series of boards, and we were exchanging notes and working together on the bugzilla. Initially ASUS was helpful and looped in Atheros. But once we had a clear pattern (I mean a pattern of bit inversions in the hex dump), both went radio-silent.
I mean, what were they going to do, recall all the motherboards in that line just because they were no good? My time was worth more than the $90 for the mobo but we figured initially that its was a Linux driver bug and were trying to get to the bottom of it.
Anyway, had to rip it out and replace it (no slots left for another NIC in that application). Went to MSI ("oooh, jap caps") but those toasted (literally, burn marks on the mobo) quickly, found ASRock and haven't looked back.
I have an ASRock Z97 Extreme 4 [amazon.com] in my cart at Amazon. Now don't you guys go buying them all before I put in the order on Friday. ;)
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yeah what horrors, I've run debian-derived Linux desktop distros on boards from all those with no problem.
Not sure why Asus is out (Score:3, Informative)
But I have built many of Linux systems on AMD/Asus platform. Not sure about the Intel stuff. But rarely have had any issues. YMMV.
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Just wait a little (Score:5, Informative)
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I've installed different flavors of Linux (including Ubuntu, since you're looking for something desktop friendly) on 32-bit computers (old aspire one, old Pentium 4 with old video and sound card) and haven't had any issues at all with motherboards (and most other things).
If you're in doubt, most distros now have a live CD/DVD so you can always test it out before installing. Of course this entails that you have access to the motherboard in the first place.
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At least with Windows I can guarantee a driver exists somewhere;
No, you can't...
Support for legacy hardware is often very poor with windows... the driver model has changed a few times, and each time cuts off some older hardware.
Then there is the issue that most drivers come as binaries, so while a piece of hardware may have 32bit drivers it may not have 64bit ones, and is even less likely to have arm drivers.
Then there are niche devices that were never intended to be used with windows, sun ethernet cards for instance that were intended to be used on sparc servers actual
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If you need to support old scanners, try VueScan.
On the other hand, with the price of scanners these days, it may be cheaper to buy a new scanner.
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At least with Windows I can guarantee a driver exists somewhere;
Sure you can. But you can't guarantee that you can use it. The best thing about the existence of Windows is the steady stream of scanners and even printers which are abandoned by the manufacturer and don't work on the latest Windows, even though they speak the same protocol that the manufacturer's latest devices use. That's right, they are literally taken out of a whitelist which the driver uses internally to determine whether it will bother to speak to your hardware. HP is particularly evil about this, and
MSI (Score:4, Informative)
I've built three boxes with MSI A75a-e35 and AMD A-8 and A-10 with no issues running Linux Mint 15/16/17, well except two of the boards had issues after 6 months. The replecement boards are working fine though.
Gigabyte minus UEFIware works (Score:3, Informative)
I just upgraded to an i5 with a GA-Z87X-D3H mobo. I've got it triple-booting (GRUB has LinuxMint 17 or Windows Loader). If I select Windows, then the windows loader gives me the option of XP-32bit or windows 7-64bit. I can attest to the fact that it is the UEFI crap in the BIOS that causes issues, but once you turn it off, all the problems disappear. All in all, money well spent and I'm quite content
As always, YMMV
Good luck
Check the Ubuntu hardware compatibility list (Score:2, Informative)
Its so extensive that it makes a good general reference when purchasing hardware.
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/
ASUS? (Score:3, Informative)
Have been using ASUS boards for linux-only computers for years, without any compatibility problems. BIOS updates come as a ZIP file that extracts into a BIN file that you can install from the BIOS itself: just download and extract the file to a USB drive from your favorite OS, then boot into the BIOS and perform the update, rebooot and all done.
Asrock is the same (Score:2)
I have 3 asrock based computers...two of them 970 extreme 3 mobos running Linux Mint debian. Bios upgrade from the bios menu is easy and quick.
Asus != ASRock (Score:2)
They are not related. ASRock may have originated from Asus, but that was over a decade ago. They have long since been their own distinct, separate brand.
That's a horror story? (Score:2)
I seem to remember this subject. (Score:3)
Asked here about a year an a half ago:
Ask Slashdot: Linux-Friendly Motherboard Manufacturers? [slashdot.org]
Virtualize Linux. . . (Score:2)
I realize that people who treat open source as a religion with MS or Apple standing in for the devil will balk at the idea of running Linux under a more user friendly, more compatible, easier to maintain OS, but it actually works quite well for most applications.
It's not perfect. GPU performance takes a huge hit, so you'll probably want to shy away with it for hardcore GPU accelerated tasks, but the overhead in terms of CPU performance is negligible so long as you have the cores and the RAM.
And many distro
epic (Score:2)
Slashdot has been epically, if possibly inadvertently, trolled.
Google hardware for linux and you will find the Ubuntu hsl in moments. Bam, done.
Or, just pick any random board and install. You've got to be looking for incompatibility, outside a small minority of parts.
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Pick up random relatively recent motherboard. Plug random pin compatible CPU in. Plug in random crap ram that fits. Wow it works with Linux. I haven't had a machine in YEARS that had incompatibility with a modern distro. I've had to screw around with a FreeNAS machine to get a crap highpoint controller card working but that is about it.
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Heck I have a machine that has all sorts of problems with Linux for 2 years running now and it is a fairly common configuration. I have the rMBP doesn't work. Linux doesn't handle asymmetrical graphics processors. It doesn't handle rescaling required for retina to work right. It doesn't handle the system's wifi or bluetooth.
Linux desktop support is getting worse not better since the commercial desktop Linuxes: Mandrake, Xandros... died.
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Ubuntu hsl gave me nothing.
You meant that:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certific... [ubuntu.com]
?
Non-issue (Score:2)
The first "horror story" is specifically regarding flashing BIOS from Linux via USB. I don't understand how this is related to modern motherboards - in fact, I see it as an issue that is disappearing. This is a situation I have had on OLDER, pre-UEFI motherboards - the requirement to run an EXE from an installed version of Windows, rather than from a boot floppy that didn't care what OS was installed. Many (including my Asrock) modern mobos can update right from the UEFI system without even spinning up the
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Sorry, but wrong on two counts:
1. That model motherboard uses the *exact* same UEFI and BIOS as mine (FM2A78M-HD+ - it is probably much older than the date I gave, which was its purchase date, sorry for any confusion) and just to make sure I wasn't making a misstatement, I flashed the BIOS and UEFI from the pre-bootloader interface this morning.
2. I do not upgrade often. I bought this computer with the Asrock this year because due to certain circumstances I was unable to bring my 2011 PC, which was an off-t
Intel or "server/workstation" boards (Score:2)
I would generally go for Intel boards as Intel stuff is generally well supported by Linux...
Otherwise i would go for higher end boards aimed at servers or highend workstations - while manufacturers of cheap desktops generally ignore Linux, manufacturers of servers definitely can't and will ensure their boards contain appropriate components.
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those other brands mentioned in this nonsensical article summary also run Linux just fine. Pro-tip: go into the BIOS and set the damn thing up for Linux ( ditto for BSD)
1980's calling (Score:2)
They want their post back.
Seriously Linux motherboard compatibility nowadays is a good if not better(more legacy support) than the latest Microsoft OS.
Never had an issue (Score:2)
Ever. I've used motherboards from Dell, HP, Intel, Gigabyte (which had issues with windows interestingly, piece of shit and I'll never buy again), and Asus.
Don't rule out ASRock (Score:3)
My main PC has an ASRock H77 Pro/MVP and I have zero problems with Fedora, all hardware recognized, UEFI works fine, CSM was disabled by default and I never bothered to turn it on, but most distros should work fine with it now.
Plenty of blame to go around (Score:2)
There's plenty of blame to go around on both sides here.
The motherboard manufacturers – pretty much all of them – are to blame for developing and shipping really crappy firmware. (Unfortunately, this is pretty much par for the course – 95% of all firmware is crap, no matter what it's for. Modern hardware companies, with a few obvious exceptions like Apple, just don't do software very well at all.)
The Linux kernel devs are to blame for being stubborn about "standards-compliance" versus the
Or you could buy a certified box (Score:2)
Rather than building one from scratch, you could buy a box that's certified to run Linux. Unlike the old days, I find that nowadays you really can't build a box any cheaper than you can buy one from companies like Lenovo or HP, and Lenovo has several boxen that are "Linux ready."
Personally I think my box-building days are over. I no longer play video games, so all I'm really interested in is a fast CPU and a PCI16 slot for my "silent" (no fans) video card, and audio and networking that are supported by
UEFI is the topic, not linux. (Score:3)
My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who's left and are they any good?
Are you kidding me?
If its a simple case of you being too lazy to disable UEFI in the bios, dont buy a motherboard with it.
All the manufactures you listed have boards without UEFI, find them before you buy without knowledge.
What's the problem? (Score:2)
I run Linux (Fedora 20) on MSI motherboards almost exclusively. No problems. I just replaced an old MSI mobo with an nVidia/AMD based one, and the only thing I had to change was the MAC address in the network configuration, Linux came up perfectly.
Having been building linux boxes for almost 20 yrs (Score:3)
- Go with a reputable motherboard vendor that will be there for the long haul (Asus, Gigabyte, or Intel)
- Get a workstation class board marketed specifically for workstations and durability, focus on the lifetime rating for capacitors/electronics and overall heat/thermal management. Ensure the system has nice diagnostics to help troubleshoot when critical components fail. These boards are generally $300-500.
- Wait for the motherboard to go through a few bios revisions and for the particular model to be added to one of the major distribution hardware compatibility lists (Redhat or Ubuntu).
- Check the motherboard manual to see if there are any limitations on ECC memory, frequently ECC memory is only supported at lower speeds and reduced sizes - generally go with boards with more comprehensive ECC memory support.
- When you have the option, choose motherboards with Intel parts for networking/etc and avoid Marvell and other parts from no-name or niche vendors (unless those vendors have a good record of supporting Linux with up-to-date patches to mainline kernel).
- If you want something commercially off-the-shell already fully built supported long term, you need to buy a workstation system marketed as Linux compatibile from a major vendor (Specific Dell Precision Workstation Models, HP) but the price markups on these will exceed most budgets.
Supermicro, but problems are rare. (Score:2)
You read "a couple" stories of problems. As in TWO, out of millions. Most motherboards will be fine.
To be sure, a gaming board and a server board have similar requirements- plenty of memory slots, etc. Supermicro makes boards designed for Linux servers, which are frequently used for high-priority workloads.
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Must be some kind of masochism. I really can see no other reason why people insist on getting wiped by MS time and again.
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Must be some kind of masochism. I really can see no other reason why people insist on getting wiped by MS time and again.
Right now Sony is eating Microsoft's lunch with PS4 actually.
I think SteamOS has a good chance of doing well, especially given how close Linux is to MacOS. Mac marketshare is picking up, so hitting both with (more or less) a single port is attractive. Various game engines are also making cross-platform a lot easier.
Windows has had its heyday, it's definitely on the decline going forward.
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How much do you get paid to make these posts?
Hehheh. The obligatory shill accusation comment.
SteamOS compared to OUYA? (Score:2)
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Yes, the SKUs differ; but nobody is going to go out of their way to make their product line more expensive to design and support by adding pointless
Re:Sucks but... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, Ill feed the troll....
Niche market share of Linux desktop systems is (using the lowest percentage of 1.68%) is between 24,000,000 and 58,000,000 systems depending on whos numbers you use for the total number of systems. (Not even going into the fact that the % of share is a guess and ranges between 1.68% and 24% depending on who you look at)
It is estimated that around 90% of those users build there own systems.
Although the market share is small, the numbers are big and to some companies well worth the investment to try to capture some of that share.
Re:Sucks but... (Score:4, Funny)
And you think with the low margins the manufacturers have these days, they can do without that share?
Unfortunely, yes. No major motherboard manufacturer even cares about niche market. And the IC manufacturers, they don't really care, either.
Also people using desktop Linux are typically in the higher income levels and can not only pay for quality
Higher income buyers are buying trendy Apple, Andoid tablets and Microsoft laptops, not linux workstations.
they can recognize it, unlike the sheep
No, they just don't care about that. But you do get the smugness of the illusion that the manufacturer uses fairy dust instead of building it like everyone else.
Wolves are always a minority.
Now, you're just assuming stuff. I'd say wolves are quite the majority of animals in wolfpacks, and the major ingredient in wolf stoo.
What you are also completely forgetting is that a lot of these will actually run as servers. You know, because Linux does well as server
Who is using COTS desktop boards on servers? Traditionally, Intel desktop cpu lines do not support ECC memory. And you talk like there is no option for servers besides Linux.
You know, because Linux does well as server, quite unlike Windows
I assume you speak from experience. I'd blame it on the sysadmin, not the operating system.
But you would not know or understand that.
Get out of the basement sometimes. Try to vent out at least some of that frustration of yours.
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Who is using COTS desktop boards on servers? Traditionally, Intel desktop cpu lines do not support ECC memory. And you talk like there is no option for servers besides Linux.
Far too many people are doing exactly this...
Smaller companies often have old desktops running as their "servers", no raid (or using the crappy bios fakeraid), no backups, no redundancy etc. Lots of cheaper servers are also based on desktop boards, and lots of budget hosting companies use such systems.
The other way round (Score:2)
I like to use ECC even on the desktop, and yes there are ways to do it. At a cost.
On the Intel side, the CPU is not really the problem. "Small" Xeons like the E3-1225V3 are attractive for their price/performance even if you run them on desktop boards and don't use ECC support. In that setup they are like i7 parts with slightly lower clock speeds.
For the board though, the choices are limited and you have to shell out an additional 100 Euros or more for a "small server" board, because the typical desk
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Besides that, I bet most Linux users tend to be quite conservative in their hardware choices. They know that new hardware + Linux is a recipe for disaster and it's better to wait and see what works reliably. Some may even only run Linux on older or even hand-me-down hardware which is known to work.
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What little free time I have I get to spend with my family, and generally, having a life. Please leave the basement once in a while.
You missed posting on Slashdot as an AC. Did that one not make you feel superior?
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That seems backwards. The linux user isn't going to be pestering support to tell them which key is the 'any' key, attempting to hammer a VGA connector into a DVI port.
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How is the guy in the indian call center going to un-mash the pins?
What will actually happen is the user will return the board and say it looked like that when he got it.
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> Yeah, because there's absolutely no install base of Windows Server out there, and it sure doesn't run entire sectors of the economy worth trillions of dollars.
>
> Are you high?
Entire sectors? Trillions?
I think that you are the one that's high, or deluded, or just incredibly clueless.
You need to stop confusing your personal consumer fixation with real work.
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I think Linux support differs from model to model (as opposed to manufacturers). I'm using a Gigabyte Z87X-UD3 and I've had no trouble. I boot Xen with debian-testing since spring and using a Windows 7 guest as gaming platform (VT-d for those who wonder).
Previously I used Asrock Z68 for the same purpose.
However, my MB pre-buy research was based mostly on VMWare E??? (the one which supports PCI passthrough) feedback since VT-d was an "elimination" criteria.
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That is just it.
You are using Z87 based motherboards and the author wants to use z97 and or x99 based motherboards. It will be a little bit of time before those chipsets are fully supported.
Everybody writes Windows drivers for their own motherboards. You have to wait for the the community to write the drivers for Linux. You other option is to look in the server/workstation space. That market uses a lot of Linux and will tell you if it supported.
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Why? EFI is convient. No more need for an OS write it's bootloader to over the old bootloader. Linux supports it, FreeBSD will support it in a few months.
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Why? EFI is convient.
The summary suggested that "BIOS/UEFI structures" cause problems on some boards under Linux, so I guess the parent just wanted to offer a workaround for that.
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The problem is testing: Many manufacturers bodge up enough EFI boot support to load windows and proclaim it done. Then when you try to boot linux you find it doesn't work, because it isn't properly following the EFI spec: It's following the parts of the spec that Windows needs.
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Yeah, except for how BIOS still uses 30 year old concepts for bootstrapping the machine, which don't even apply to today's hardware. Oh, and coming up in programmed IO mode until your OS loads the storage driver allowing for a disk transfer rate that isn't 30 years old. Or any of the other massive improvements that have nothing to do with SecureBoot, which you can turn off on any EFI system that supports it.
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Being 30 years old is not inherently problematic. If being 30 years old is a problem, you have to actually state what the problem is. Actually have an argument.
The PIO thing seems like it would be a minor nuissance. Again it seems like something that's "superficially tragic".
The balance of the tradeoffs don't seem to be in EFI's favor unless you are a mindless adherent of the "new shiny shiny".
Yup (Score:2)
I have an Asus Z87 board, absolutely no problems whatsoever. I've booted several distros on it and it just works.
Re: (Score:2)
That's assuming you can actually find a desktop board that supports the Haswel-E/Devils Canyon CPUs the OP wants AND is supported by Coreboot. A read of the Coreboot compatibility list shows not a single supported desktop board that can run anything Intel past a Pentium 3 (there are laptops/embedded/dev boards that can run something newer but no full-on desktop boards)
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed WTF? All my machines are Gigabyte / AMD or Gigabyte Intel. I have absolutely no problems running linux on any other them. I also have a SteamOS test box just because I could.
My experience with Linux in general is it will "just work". And worst case scenario is turning off UEFI which if you can't do you shouldn't be putting a machine together anyway.
Re:what? (Score:4, Informative)
Reply to myself - Buy this - Gigabyte G1-SNIPER-M5 - it is the most stupidly over the top motherboard (it even has green bits) with all the latest fandangly bits and it works out of the box with linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed WTF? All my machines are Gigabyte / AMD or Gigabyte Intel. I have absolutely no problems running linux on any other them. I also have a SteamOS test box just because I could.
My experience with Linux in general is it will "just work". And worst case scenario is turning off UEFI which if you can't do you shouldn't be putting a machine together anyway.
Agreed, WTF - this whole story seems a bit like a troll. A year ago I bought the latest Gigabyte lga2011 GA-X79-UD5 [gigabyte.com.au] with a Xeon 8 core 20Mb cache - so pretty much the cutting edge and it worked without a problem.
Whilst this is the highest spec I've ever bought (for that generation CPU) every machine I have bought has been a gigabyte's top end gear and they work fine. Not trying to sell GB here, I'm sure other vendors are good too (like ASUS), they were just my preference and I can report that it has been r
Re: (Score:2)
Have pulled. Their Z87 board was the end of the line AFAIK. Newegg has no desktop board listed from them as of now.
Re: (Score:2)