Suggestion for AM2 mainboard?

[gazlang]

I have just installed an asus m2n-deluxe and works perfect out of the box. It hasn't got a video out at all (but I have a good card that I intended to use anyway) but it has got 7 SATA ports! (lots of room for fast hard drives!) 3 pci, 2 pci express, 7.1 HD sound with sp/dif and coax out.
Nice board!

[Kybber]

I am really sorry that I haven't updated this thread with my progress.
But here is is:

The Abit AN-M2HD works quite well with LMCE. Both HDMI and VGA worked
fine. There are two things to note:
1. The nvidia-driver included with LMCE0704 is not compatible with
the on-board GPU. That can easily be fixed by following these instructions:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10398
Edit: If you install the drivers before installing LMCE over Kubuntu, you
will have to install them again on first boot. Seems like LMCE overwrites
the drivers on installation.
2. Menus will flicker when using UI2 with transparency. This seems to
be a problem with the driver for the 7050 chip:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=1897.0
UI2 w/o transparency works fine, however.

Unfortunately I have to admit that I came across Media Portal which
suits my needs better than LMCE. My wife and I like to watch TV
shows, and Media Portal has a very nice plugin for that. So I'm sad
to say that I've stopped using LMCE altogheter, but have saved room
on the hard drive just in case I want to try it out again at a later time.

As a sidenote: I've been using the VGA output instead of HDMI. When
using the HDMI cable, Windows will disconnect the TV whenever I turn
the TV off. When I turn it on again, the hardware is redetected, but
the picture will sometimes be shifted a bit to the right. I have to jump
through some hoops to get it back to normal again. This is not an issue
when using the VGA cable. I doubt this would be a problem in Linux, and
I hope there's a way to disable this feature in Windows as well. But in
the meantime the VGA cable does the job wonderfully, and I am very
happy with the setup

[RDAC]

I'm having a beast of a time with the little brother of the board you chose (AN-M2). I've got the video driver up and rolling, but still don't have UI2 yet. Here's how I did it:

Install from Quick Install Disc.
You'll get the router prompt, so be ready for it. Go ahead and log in (u: linuxmce p: linuxmce).
sudo -s
wget NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run
sh NVIDIA*.run
Follow the prompts, saying no to the 'search for blah blah module' and yes to 'I'm gonna have to build it from scratch, is that ok?'
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Follow the prompts, most of them can be OK'd through. Make sure your monitor resolution is right (or one notch below). Once done...
nvidia-xconfig
That'll give it the nvidia touch, then...
cd /etc/X11
vi xorg.conf
Go to the last line under 'Devices', press 'Shift' and 'r' and add...
Option "NoLogo" "true" --> More of a personal taste, this one's optional.
Option "UseEDIDDpi" "false"
Edit the monitor resolution, if you need to at this time. I had to in order to drop down from 1280x768 to 1280x720 for my panel.
Press 'Esc' to stop your edit and hold down 'Shift' and type 'zz' to save.
startx
KDE should start up.
If everything's working, great. At this point, I went and downloaded Envy to make sure it got installed.
Activate AVWizard upon reboot from Linux MCE Launch Manager (it's under the Video tab, once everything finishes what it's doing).
You may need to click like crazy to close out the other things that are going on (main setup wizard will try to start, etc.).
Select UI2 without transparency (supposedly, this has some nasty flickering if you select the alpha blending).
Once done, reboot and select recovery mode from grub's menu at startup (hit the esc key on boot when you see the prompt)
Same process, login, repeat edits to xorg.conf, etc.

That should work. I've got half the process working now, but don't have UI2 yet (saw another suggestion to start with UI1, and now I can't get it to switch to UI2 for the life of me).

Honestly, at this point, for your sanity - go with the 6xxx series chipset boards. You may lose a couple of sata slots, but that can be remedied with a card and the time you'll save will be worth it. Plus, you can use UI2 with alpha blending, which, would I have known that this board isn't capable of it yet, I would have skipped it in the first place.

Oh well, good thing I bought a 6xxx series board as a backup. Hopefully when it's better integrated into LMCE I can put it back in.

[marrandy]

Does anyone have any fiire stuff yet ?

I ordered some stuff from then on the 25th and the last update on the order is on the 27th, which says it was assigned to someone... I know I'm being impatient as some of this stuff takes time, but this is the first time I had someone charge my card (was almost immediate) prior to it being ready to ship.

Having said that, I did ask them a question before my order and they did respond... It just took a couple weeks...

Hello again.

It's been about 4-weeks.

Any news on your fiire purchase yet ?

Regards...Martin