Chris G wrote:
So, what's a good motherboard to go for at the moment that will 'just work' with a (say) Ubuntu 9.04 installation?
The quick answer is just about anything.
Personally I would go for something with an Intel chipset if you are looking at core2 CPU's as mine is perfectly supported here (even down to ACPI sleep/suspend if it wasn't for the damn nvidia gfx card) but we are only talking about chipset/storage/sound/network support here and in my experience you would be unlucky to find any generic mainboard where those don't work at least mostly out of the box.
It's hard to recommend a specific model of board unless we know more about the machine (i.e what CPU, what interfaces you care about, integrated gfx or not, mATX or not etc)
The other option is that I have used a few of the ebuyer own brand (zoostorm ?) budget machines and for the money they are pretty reasonable and come sans OS, Although I note at the moment the very cheapest ones have vanished from the site so you are looking at circa £200 albeit for a more than reasonable and complete machine.
Building machines from scratch just isn't as fun as it used to be..memory compatibility lists from board manufacturers, horrible intel heat-sinks which are confusing to fit properly, indeterminate post errors etc.
Caveat, there is/was an issue with the current ubuntu and intel video chipsets, I can't remember the specifics and if it was unique to ubuntu or even if it would affect people not needing 3D support, but I'd google a bit first on whatever chipset you chose (the cheapest zoostorm machine is intel G31)