[clue-tech] Fried MoBo, suggestions for replacement?

[katanacb at comcast.net]

Well, I came home the other day to find that my home Linux machine decided that it's had enough, and went to the great computer resting place in the sky.   It won't boot anymore ... in fact it won't even POST.   I'm guessing that the motherboard is bad, so I'm looking to replace it fairly soon (within the next few days).

Without trying to start any sort of flame war, I'm looking for suggestions on a  Linux-friendly replacement.   The one I had was a total nightmare when I first got it to setup under Linux, so I'm looking for suggestions as to what's out there that might work a little better or be easier to setup driver-wise.   (I've even thought about taking the plunge and getting a Mac, but that's a totally different thread......)

My only requirements are:

1).  Should have some sort IDE RAID capability. I had an IDE RAID setup on the last machine and I'd like to re-use all the drives as they appear to be good.  The drives aren't SATA so SATA RAID probably isn't a good option for me (unless they make some sort of kit to convert the IDE connector  SATA)

2).  AGP 8X, as I'm guessing the video card I had is still good as well.... unless there is a good MoBo out there with a decent integrated video card.

3).  It doesn't matter to me if it's Intel or AMD, though I am leaning towards 64-bit CPUs.

4).  Recent Linux distributions (i.e, RH4, SuSE 9.2 or 9.3, etc) should support the hardware out of the box.  I had to hunt all over the internet for drivers for my last MoBo and I don't want to have to go through that again if I can avoid it.

I could go out and google or check a distro's hardware compatibility list (and I have to some degree), but I'd like to get some real-world feedback as to what works well and what doesn't.  I've heard ASUS and MSI work well... but just looking for some guidance.



-Chris