AM2 and MythTV war stories, a continuing saga

I have seen this in my own experiences from time to time - some motherboards simply choose not to work well with Linux. What sucks is when they are one of those brands who otherwise makes a great product.

Warning to Linux users who want to upgrade to socket AM2 motherboards: You will almost definitely run into problems with Linux. I have an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version, and that broke IO-APIC on all versions of the Linux kernel I’ve tried, including 2.6.17.7. I couldn’t boot Linux without the “noapic” boot parameter. I solved this problem by restoring an older BIOS, and I lost a fancy NVidia acceleration feature in the process. That’s no big deal for me because the feature primarily benefits Windows games and I don’t play Windows games often enough to care.

I’d still like to see this problem solved, and I don’t see a solution coming anytime soon. Based on what I’ve read in the Linux kernel developer mailing list, few people have AM2-based boards and little if any work is being done to deal with them. Thanks to a spinal problem, I’m in too much pain to mess with BIOS versions and debugging APIC problems, so the kernel developers can’t get help from me. In fact, typing this is an exercise in masochism. But I’m hoping someone out there will get an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard and help out…. Source: Linux Journal