HI,
I'm considering of buying either one of these M/Bs that have everything on-board (VGA, Lan & Audio), 4GB Ram & an Intel Core i3-2100 (3M Cache, 3.10 GHz) and install Linux Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS 64bit to utilize the 4GB Ram.
I noticed that neither manufacturers have Linux Drivers for their M/B, so will all the M/B components (H67 chip-set, Lan, Audio, VGA) will be recognized by the Ubuntu installation. I'm concerned whether the on-board graphics processor of the chip-set & CPU will work in Ubuntu?
Or whether I should get a separate PCI Express 16x VGA card (NVIDIA / ATI) that both support Linux.
Otherwise , which other equivalent M/B would be 100% compatible with Linux Ubuntu...
The biggest concern I've usually had with new motherboards is networking - if that is not supported out of the box everything else becomes much more complicated. From what I can see, both boards have the same network controller, and internet discussions suggest it works fine (had some stability issues 6 months ago but fixed).
Everything else typically just works if you're not trying to use bleeding edge components. In that regard, I probably wouldn't sweat too much over either option. Onboard graphics and audio have been quite reliable in my experience, especially on budget boards where the chipsets have been around for a while.
While onboard is fine if it is a business machine and wouldn't be concerned about it being supported, I'd personally spend just a small amount on a very, very basic Nvidia graphics card. Intel graphics just don't cut it for anything 3D, and I've had much better experiences with Nvidia cards on Linux than ATI. Will just make working with the machine a little less painful.
