MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 and openSUSE 12.3?

English Hardware
1

Does anyone have experience installing openSUSE 12.3 on a MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 UEFI motherboard?

I am very seriously considering buying the MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 motherboard, and I need to be sure I can successfully install and run openSUSE 12.3 on it, before I spend any of my very limited budget on it. I have zero experience with UEFI and am very concerned openSUSE 12.3 might not work with the MSI 990FXA-GD80V2.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Link to MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 UEFI motherboard:
MSI USA - Computer, Laptop, Notebook, Desktop, Mainboard, Graphics and more

2

Because there must be thousands of motherboards models out there in use, its going to be a stroke of luck to find an exact match. What I can say is AMD CPU’s work fine with openSUSE, I have had no problems using MSI with openSUSE and my latest motherboards all support UEFI. If you use an MBR based disk to boot, any version of Windows and any version of openSUSE should work under an UEFI PC setup. A UEFI motherboard adds secure boot and the ability to boot from a GPT partitioned hard disk. GPT disks support allows hard disks larger than 2.2 TB to be used for booting and data storage.

For more info on such partitions, have a look here:

Creating Partitions During Install for MBR and GPT Hard Disks - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

So, the motherboard/CPU/UEFI should be OK if you stick with an MBR formatted hard disk and with openSUSE 12.3 and UEFI, you can support data disks which are 3 or 4 TB in size, you would just not boot from them. If you elect to go for an EFI boot, both openSUSE and Windows, if you have Windows 8, should be set to boot EFI. A mixed system, EFI and MBR may require a UEFI PC selection to switch what to boot from. Consider keeping it simple by using an MBR boot disk and a MBR format is a good selection for SSD disks.

Thank You,

3

I have a MSI 990FXA-GD65, essentially the same hardware just a little simpler and cheaper. I have 2 sata drives, both boots with standard MBR, selectable with F11 during boot, a Toshiba sata boots openSuse-12.3-64, a Seagate boots FreeBSD-9.1-64, no problems at all. The advantage of building the system yourself is that you don’t have to deal with UEFI at all, if you really want to screw things up you need to buy a Trusted Platform Module and plug it in. Only one negative point, MSI only offres BIOS-upgrades in .exe format, but it can be done with FreeDOS from a Thumbdrive.

4

Thank you for you reply.

I contacted MSI pre-sales technical support about the BIOS used by the 990FXA-GD80V2, and they said it is UEFI-only.

5

Thank you for such a detailed reply.

I am a little confused about your statement above. As I understand the situation, MBR and UEFI are mutually exclusive. Can you please clarify what you intended with the quote above?

I realized reading your reply that I need to clarify what I intended with my original post. The part that I am concerned about with the MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 is that openSUSE can boot this board using UEFI. I have anecdotal evidence from posts on other forums that all the hardware (sound, network, SATA, etc.) works correctly under openSUSE.

6

To clarify my suggestions:

  1. UEFI motherboards can be used to boot MBR formatted disks …
  2. MBR disks provide more working grub 2 booting options when dual booting with openSUSE and Windows.
  3. UEFI and openSUSE work together just fine.
  4. If you require booting from a single hard disk larger than 2.2 TB, you must use a GPT formatted hard drive and an EFI boot configuration.

Thank You,

7

if the OP is having problems with terminology this might help

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then it just leaves the question does OpenSuse 12.3 build a UEFI capable kernel when it installs / is it preferable to cause it too. There might be an install boot option.

Then any complications with dual booting for those that wish to do that. There shouldn’t be really just no need for the usual small boot partition. One aspect of that is that it should be possible to obtain dual booting from windows - if they have kept that facility available.

John