I was curious if any one has successfully installed Linux on an Intel Socket 1336 motherboard (with the new Intel core i7 cpu ? ).
When I return off of vacation in late January, I’ll be in the market for a new PC. Normally I don’t go for state of the art PCs, but given it tends to be 4 to 6 years between PC purchases for me, I am contemplating purchasing a slightly more powerful PC, than I would if I procured a new PC every 2 to 3 years.
I checked the openSUSE HCL, surfed google, etc … but I did not find any experiences. None as of today that I could find. I see both Dell and Acer are now offering Intel core i7 CPU PCs (based on a socket 1336 motherboard), but I have not found any reviews (nor mention of success stories) with Linux to date for hardware designed to support the i7.
I’m using a Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme with an i7-920, 3x2GB DDR3, 2 SATA hds, an older IDE hd and an IDE Cdrom. Video is an EVGA 9800GT 512. Dual booting with Vista-sp1 and SUSE 11.1. I am using the 64-bit versions of the operating systems. Bios is F3 (latest non-beta).
I ran into some GRUB problems during the SUSE 11.1 install. It turns out that dual-booting with Vista is messy. I wound up using two hard drives, with Vista on the first and SUSE 11.1 on the other - 11.1 then installed easily. So far I only have three problems: my Nvidia based 9800GT video is not recognized - I have to use it as a generic VESA card, and Suspend-to-ram doesn’t quite work. Sound output works. I haven’t tried anything fancy with the sound. I haven’t tried the IEEE 1394 ports. The two Realtek 8111D lan ports don’t always work - I sometimes have to power-cycle the computer several times before they work. Inconvenient but usable. (They don’t do this with Vista) I haven’t tried the JMB322 sata ports.
I initially used an Antec Neo-550 power supply, which whined loudly and refused to deliver the current. So I wound up using a Cooler Master 850 watt supply. It was a squeeze getting it all into my Antec Sonata 550 Plus case.
I only do a full systems upgrade every decade or so. I needed a hobby/adventure so I got this system. I also saw that Windows 7 is in beta so I decided to finally try Vista (it’s been out long enough that it ought to be usable). So I am trying out new hardware with two new operating systems. I’m pleased that it works this well considering that. Now I get to learn about Nvidia video drivers and s2ram!
I’m off on vacation in less than 12 hours for 2.5 weeks, but when I get back I plan to take a hard look at a socket-1336 core i7 system (possibly an MSI motherboard). Its interesting to read of your experience with the Gigabyte.
One alteration to my last post - audio sounds fine but when I log on there is a brief error message about ALC883 codec not initializing and falling back to default. I can hear the sound fine, but the codec is actually an ACL889A so the driver isn’t quite up to date. I wouldn’t be surprised if the high-definition part of the audio has problems.
The motherboards (socket 1366 for X58 and the Core i7) our local PC store has are the following (below). I’m trying to determine which ones have the best chance for Linux compatibility. I’m currenly leaning toward the MSI:
Well its two months later, and I still have not purchased my new desktop PC yet. … but I’m getting closer to making a decision. With the time that has gone by, reports are beginning to trickle in of Linux users (mainly Ubuntu) have difficulties and solving them with these motherboards, … and some just reporting success and not mentioning any glitches along the way. …
Asus P6T Deluxe ATX
: I’ve read of Ubuntu users having success with the Asus P6T Deluxe ATX. Thats not suprising since I learned this motherboard comes with an “Asus Express Gate SSD” boot mode, which in essence boots direct (in 5 sec) to a stripped down Linux version. This motherboard also has received some good reviews … - Gigabyte GA EX58-UD3R
(Not the Extreme version noted by SnorkleZ, and not listed in my quote) … I’ve read of Ubuntu users both struggling and succeeding with this motherboard. Some had to change the AHCI setting to ON in their BIOS (and the AHCI purportedly needs a 2.6.19 kernel … ) , others needed the pci=nomsi boot parameter (and I’ve read of other changes to the /boot/grub/menu.lst to allow a nominal boot). - Gigabyte GA EX58 UD5
Again, I read of Ubuntu failure and success. I read of a surprising number of Vista problems. There were a lot of complaints from both Vista and Ubuntu users about the power down … and a note that the mother needed to be physically unplugged some times, before rebooting, for ethernet to work. - Gigabyte GA EX58 UD4P
Again, I’ve read of both failure and success amongst Ubuntu users (and read of a Fedora success). I saw one review where this motherboard came second to the Asus P6T Delux, … but I don’t place much stock in that. - MSI X58 Platinum
I read of a Ubuntu success, with a detailed performance review in one case. They did a bench mark test with ffmpeg under Ubuntu which was impressive.
In the above short list, I note that the MSI I listed do not support SLI (scalable link interface) but the Asus and some of the Gigabyte do. I have not figured out if this is relevant to Linux … (ie do the Linux graphic card drivers support SLI, and does one gain anything from a performance perspective in Linux if one adopts such an approach) ?
But the good news is it appears all of the above “appear” to be supported by Linux (but no promises no guarantees on this … its just an indication from my research thus far). The Gigabyte GA EX58 UD5 ethernet/power hiccups when booting between different OS don’t look good, and the Gigabyte GA EX58 UD3R AHCI hiccups upon installation are a bit of a concern … although the reports wrt that may have been just from new Linux users. … Its hard to judge …
I hope to decide in the next month or so as to which motherboard I select. I’ve revised my view, currently, I’m leaning toward the Asus with the MSI second…
I recently purchased an EVGA X58 Sli motherboard with Intel I7 920 to run opensuse 11.1/ VMWare Server 2.0. I will be installing the operating system this weekend while making an installation guide for my IT Deptartment. I will post functionality and performance at a later date. My research prior to committing to this investment leads me to believe the processor and chipset are supported in the latest Linux kernel. You may end up having to manually install your video and audio drivers after installation. But it sure beats having to build a new kernel from scratch.
Asus P6t Deluxe V1 and V2
opensuse 11.0 and 11.1 both work out of the box for me.
sata, sas, raid, dual lan, sound, ide, floppy
lm_sensors reads the temps on all 4 cores and Northbridge, fan speeds on all headers, and vcore voltage
sleep and suspend both work
I even have a huge overclock and the NB temp is around 31C most of the time
I haven’t found a single thing that just didn’t work yet. And I got them 6 months ago.
I should note, I ended up buying an Asus P6t Deluxe V2 and installed 64-bit openSUSE-11.1. This new PC has 6GB RAM and a nVidia GeForce GTX260 graphic card. The graphic card gave me a minor hiccup as when I installed the card, the openGL driver for nvidia did not work well with that card (that has now been fixed) so eventually I ended up listening and following microchip’s excellent advice and installed the proprietary nvidia graphic driver.
This PC is seriously fast, and I have no complaints with the motherboard at this time.
microchip8: Of course I installed 64-bit
oldcpu: I had no graphics problems (luckily) with my GTX 285 :), but I had the proprietary nvidia driver on a usb stick and went to it right after firstboot.
