[Discuss] Motherboard recommendations for integrated Intel graphics and gigabit networking?

[Alan W. Irwin]

Barbara and I plan to buy new hardware with integrated Intel graphics and
gigabit networking.  One vendor recommended the Gigabyte 965G-DS3
motherboard which includes the Intel G965 chipset with X3000 graphics core
and the Marvell 8056 PCI-E gigabit ethernet controller.  The X3000 graphics
core seems to have okay Linux support at this time. However, the Marvell
8056 seems problematic for Linux at this time.

According to the thread at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/any-solution-for-the-sky2-driver-for-marvell-8056-549244/?s=555b77911e26b6772f35a89d735329fe
the 8056 was so problematic with Linux that it was disabled for a recent
(2007-05-09) Linux kernel, and then for a later experimental kernel it
became enabled again except for Gigabyte motherboards whose gigabit
networking is blacklisted until the issue is sorted out.

Since this issue has been known for a number of months this year, I think it
is going to take a while to solve even for experimental kernels, and then it
will take several more months to propagate to vendor kernels. Therefore, we
don't want to delay the whole hardware buy until this issue is resolved.

Can somebody recommend a recent motherboard with integrated Intel graphics
and gigabit networking that works well for Linux?

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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