[K12OSN] Motherboard Manufacturer Recommendations?

[Henry Hartley]

Henry Hartley wrote:
>> 
>> I've burned CDs with 64-bit versions of both Fedora 9 and K12LTSP
>> 5EL.  I'll try F9 first but I understand that's not "done" yet with
>> LTSP 5.  I have CentOS 5 running (without the LTSP stuff) on a
>> couple other machines and I'm pretty happy with it but it's always
>> nice to show off the bleeding edge stuff.  Anyway, it's worth a try.

Back in town and finally following up on my own thread of a month ago.
I got the machine put together and yesterday installed the CentOS 5
based K12LTSP.  One small but significant problem and something to be
aware of if you plan to use that package.  The motherboard I got (Asus
M2A-VM) includes a Realtec 8111/8168B gigabit Ethernet controller.
Unfortunately, CentOS through version 5.1 does NOT support it.  It is (I
understand - see link below) mostly supported by version 5.2 but as the
CDs I burned are 5.0, that's not much help.  In general, that wouldn't
be a problem since the normal procedure is to install 5.0 and then run
yum update to get the latest and greatest.  But when the Ethernet
controller doesn't work, that's sort of hard.  There are plenty of ways
to get around this, so it's not a show stopper but it's something you
should be aware of if your system uses this ethernet controller.

In any case I decided, given this small road block, that I might as well
give Fedora 9 and LTSP 5 a try.  Fedora 9 recognized the 8168 controller
as well as all other devices with no problems and seems to be working
well (although I haven't gotten to the LTSP part yet).  Still, looks
good.  Thanks again for all the help, for this list and (to those who
actually write this stuff) for the software itself.  It's brilliant.

Realtek TRL8111B / RTL8168B NIC
http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/HardwareList/RealTekRTL8111b

-- 
Henry