contemplating new PC, with Gigabyte GA-H170-D3H mobo

[jlittle]

Hi all

My venerable desktop, which has run Kubuntu since Hardy, finally died a few days ago. I had replaced motherboard, memory, HDD, and the power supply twice, though still the same Athlon CPU. Posting this from an even more ancient box running Lubuntu.

My favourite computer shop, when asked about a well-performing machine, has suggested an Intel Skylake i7 in a H170 chipset motherboard from Gigabyte, to get support for new fast bits like USB 3.

The skylake parts only came out recently, can anyone pass remarks about compatibility with Kubuntu? Or give pointers as to how I would find out? (Google has not helped me.)

[Qqmike]

can anyone pass remarks about compatibility with Kubuntu? Or give pointers as to how I would find out?

Good question.
I'm trying to think what would be important, what would matter to Kubuntu about the motherboard. Graphics (HD530)? memory (yours will take the newer DDR4)? integrated network card? I can't imagine that it should matter to the OS, but, really, I'm not sure.

I see why your supplier recommenced this board, though:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new-produ...tions-3590751/

It replaces the H97 chip which WAS kind of a standard, mainstream choice -- so ... one would think that this new Skylake should be fairly mainstream.

EDIT: I'm asking this question at another board where I hang out.

[jlittle]

I've since gleaned a couple of things:
® Phoronix is a site for tests of linux on motherboards, mostly from a performance perspective, but their site's search function is turned off presently.
® Kernel 4.3 released recently has fixes for skylake

Regards, John Little

[Qqmike]

from MarkM:

The OS needs to have drivers available for many of the components built into the motherboard, such as the hard drive controller, USB controllers, sound chip, network interface and so on. With that said, I don't know how many devices on the motherboard/in the chipset are truly new. There might be drivers for 90% of the motherboard's functionality. The question is what's in the (hypothetical) missing 10%?

I don't know the answer, but a quick Google search didn't turn up any Linux drivers for the H170 chipset, so it might be too early yet.

[jlittle]

Thank you, Qqmike. I had, of course, attempted the "quick google searches" before posting.
Being more persistent, I've found a report on reddit of a driver needed to get the ethernet to work, and that System76 are selling a desktop based on the H170 chipset, so it can be made to work. Part of me is attracted to the challenge...

Regards, John Little

[jmsms]

Don't have that particular mobo but an MSI z170 dualboot win10/kubuntu 15.10 with 4.2.0-19. Not using ethernet instead atheros-based wifi card. Earlier kernels could boot but would have no sound, no onboard opengl, messed-up usb function. Currently everything seems to work OK...I still had lots of problems with really bad kde crashes with the Intel video and using kmail, but with nvidia and thunderbird it is OK most of the time. system update thing in the tray doesn't work(have to use cli to update). But it is stable enough to rely on. Hopefully it will get better.

JS

[jlittle]

Thanks, jmsms. The season has intervened, with lots to do and places to go, so I am postponing the purchase to when I might have the time to make it work, maybe mid-January.

[jlittle]

To wrap this up, I bought the new system in March. No trouble with 16.04, runs really well. Boots in a few seconds. 1 second from login to desktop. I build my own vim, 17 seconds to configure and make from scratch.

[vinnywright]

so what all did you end up putting on that MB ?

VINNY

[jlittle]

so what all did you end up putting on that MB ?

An i7-6700 four core, with hyper threads, so Linux and KDE see 8 cores. The compile job I mentioned nearly maxes them all. With a Samsung SSD 750 EVO 250GB, using btrfs on the main partition, and 16 GiB of RAM.