Linux OS and Everything Else

2 days ago my Mandriva install failed to boot back up on my pc with the MSI board in it. I could try to fix it or look for something new. I chose the latter and found the new Alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 called Hardy Heron (Desktop Edition). I booted the Live CD - OH YEAH!! Everything worked Sound , Video, Internet - Good to go - did the install - no problems - installed the Nvidia (non Free Driver) OH YEAH - Desktop Effects work - 3d games are working - yeah yeah yeah!!!

Finally I think I have found a working Linux Distro for my board the MSI K9NGM3. I will comment that I have not tried the latest Ubuntu on it , so that may also work but - tonight I downloaded and burned Mandriva One 2008. I am in the Live CD right now and my video display is perfect, my network/internet connection was found, and I just checked my control panel for sound through the Sound Test and I had sound - I did have two minor glitches YouTube has no sound in Firefox - common for some reason right now on many Linux Distros that  I boot up - and I tried playing a Shoutcast stream and Kaffeine attempted to play it and totally crashed. Other than that the KDE 3.5 is totally beautiful and my plans are to actually install this on my hard drive in the next couple of days. I used to use Mandrake quite some time ago but as it progressed into Mandriva I had some issues with it - but it seems like it might be ok now so maybe I’ll give it a spin.

More testing tonight of this motherboard. This time I have an IDE CDROM Drive installed. Dyne 2.5.2 Boots up into graphical desktop - but no nic or sound. Puppy 2.16 no nic no sound boots into graphical desktop. NimbleX Graphical Desktop no nic no sound. Gos Live 2.0 would not even boot. Knoppix 5.1.1 loads graphical desktop but no beryl 3d, no sound, no nic.

Now for the sort of good news. Slax 6.0 boots into graphical desktop, nic works , sound works but my display is set at a very high resolution and everything is very tiny, I can barely read any text because it is so small, Volume was set to zero at first - so check that first if you think you have no sound. When I tried to login to blog.com it hung at about 50% and would not load this page. So although Slax seems to run on this board I can’t really say it is good or very usable - but it is better than anything listed above.

If anyone else has got any Linux distro’s to run “GOOD” on this motherboard please post a response and let me know. When I google this board I keep finding myself so evidently I am the only one running these tests and posting results at this moment. I will continue to do so.

I must test further. After several more attempts at running any type of linux on my new pc - I now think it is my DVDRW causing the problems and not the motherboard. I went total SATA with my DVDRW and My Hard Drive not thinking this would somehow be a problem. The thing is that all of my Linux Distros are looking for an IDE based DVD/CD Drive when they go to boot and cannot find one. So either I have to search for Distros that can find a SATA drive , not use Linux on this PC, or install an IDE DVD drive (which I did not want to do). I was trying to keep the pc simple and clean and only put in what I needed - Now in order to run any of my Linux Distros I am forced into installing an IDE Drive. So I’m sorry if anyone reading has taken my advice on the board not running Linux - this may not be the case at all - I will not know anything further until I tear my pc down and add an IDE DVD Drive. Then I will be able to report better about that motherboard. MSI K9NGM3

Lately I am having issues finding a version of linux to run on the MSI K9ngm3. If anyone knows a good distro or two that work well with this board please advise, thanks. I figured since it had the Nvidia chipset I would be alright - I am using the board straight with no cards - XP works fine but having trouble finding good linux match