[ardour-users] Machine configurations

[Ctirad Fertr]

> Having enormous difficulty getting Ardour running under Mandrake 9.2 for
> various reasons. Most recently, it's seemingly because Mandrake doesn't
> particularly like the ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe motherboard that came in the
> machine.

This mobo has Nforce2 chipset, which is probably the worst choice for linux. 
The chipset itself is not as bad, though it´s not fully supported and you 
need binary drivers from Nvidia to use all it's features.   

> Is anyone here using Ardour with Mandrake, and if so, can they recommend a
> decent motherboard to use?

Generally, for linux I would use only Intel or VIA based motherboards. Both 
are very well documented, stable and supported by plain linux kernel without 
need of third party closed-source drivers. Also remeber, that for VIA KT600 
and up, you need the 2.6.x kernel. 

For AMD/VIA based mobos i reccomend anything from EpoX, Abit and Gigabyte.  
Asus used to be a highend, but nowdays it is average and subaverage :(

You also should learn yourself how to compile your own linux kernel. It´s not 
important whatever distro you use, simply do it ;)  It´s not difficult at 
all. The result will be tuned system which perfectly fits you hardware.     

Regards,

Ctirad