My mobo vs. Linux. Am I doomed?

Chinthor · March 17, 2016

I have a Gigabyte 970A-DS3P rev. 1.0. I know that both the onboard lan and usb 3 have issues working with Linux. Noted, and worked around.

However, after 16 attempts (ubuntu, mint, fedora, black lab)*(32 bit, 64 bit) * (live dvd, local install) I still have the same recurring problem.

At some random point during my session, the computer will completely lock up. Screen image frozen. No error message. No crash report. No key combination has any effect. Power button has no effect unless held down for a hard power off. And the timing is anywhere from 10 seconds after boot, to 3+ hours later. But so far the freeze is certain. Every session has ended this way.

So. Is this model motherboard so incompatible with Linux that I need to relegate it to being a windows box and buy something else?

Is there a fix I just haven't found?

Is this specific board flaky in some way that windows can overlook but causes Linux to have a stroke? (back to option one.)

And lastly. If I need to replace this board in order to use Linux, what are the best choices? This one was chosen for supporting my AMD 6-core Vishra with the option of upping it to an 8-core Black edition later. It sports 8GB of ram now, but goes up to 32 if I want it to. I plan to max it out eventually. I have an addiction to multi-boot-os systems that has always caused me problems. My intention is to stop making multi-boot partitions and virtualize all of my os installs, using Un-raid or something like it to manage them. That itself might solve my problem, if almost every single VM or hypervisor wasn't somewhere in the linux family. And I think Microsoft's Hypervisor is a little out of my league.

What do you think?

Coaxialgamer · March 17, 2016

Ive never heard of a board being incompatible with linux...

Are you sure that something else isn't causing the problem?

Chinthor · March 17, 2016

The USB 3 and LAN issues are directly Linux related. Some difference between this chipset and the previous one isn't covered in the kernel.

For my problem specifically, I have no other data to blame it on. Tried changing other pieces of hardware. And windows 10 will run for days or weeks with no issues. At least, no issues other that it being windows.