Gigabyte's ASPM Motherboard Fix: Use Windows

[Tundra]

That makes no sense. Why did you choose Gigabyte in the first place when they had made no claims of Linux support to start with? And why does publicly stating what was already implicitly stated change anything?

1.- Availability
2.- Best features/cost relation.
3.- Passed all our tests.

Until now, there was no known policy against other system, even if they didn't support it. You could use their boards as long as your system adheres to the same standards the board was supposed to support. With this statement, Gigabyte said they don't care about specifications, so their products are trash.

Not providing support for linux is one thing, not caring to fix their faulty products is something entirely different.

[AlbertP]

I thought to have 2 good motherboards as spares, but the Asus P4P800SE appears to have BIOS problems on Linux and the Abit IC7-G isn't rated very well in reviews (including Windows).
Actually I seem to have to be glad that the only CPU I have for those boards lacks 64-bit support. But with a 3,2GHz one the performance is good enough for me. I am not using 4+GB of RAM, my desktop runs with 768MB on its ASRock board right now.

[WorBlux]

Yes but unless the issue effects the supported operating system there is little reason for them to bother fixing it. If it works fine in Windows that is all that matters to them. Also just trying to get the information to the proper people is a HUGE challenge. In the article Mike linked to a thread I posted some time back trying to get the proper information to Asus's BIOS team. I would invite you to read that thread and see how much of a challenge that is. I posted the full correspondence from one such episode ( I have had many such issues and every time to get anything resolved involved a late night phone call over seas.).

What they said is because come of our chip-set vendors don't support Linux, we can't provide driver support for linux. They never said thay had zero interest in BIOS compatibility for any non-windows system. Properly declaring ASPM support is not something they need upstream support to do, and is something that will make their boards more competitive in certain use cases.

It's just fighting the damn bureaucracy and getting the information to people that have the authority and ability to fix the issue that is the problem. Maybe the solution is a training and personnel issue, or maybe the solution is with the Linux community. Getting the guy you talked to on a mailing list about linux-BIOS, or linux-power-management issues might help.

The support and PR guys are always going to have an apologetic attitude, "The product is what it is, and if you don't like it, well we can't do anything to change it", because in all honesty that is their reality. They have to verify the problem, talk the thier boss who talks to his boss who reports to the head of the department who reports to the CEO who has to pass it back the the head of the R&D department who has to pass it the the manager of of the BIOS project, which must then actually assign one of his teams to look at the issue, who have to verify it (again) and then actually fix it. You'd have to have an overwhelming number of complaints to get past this hurdle.

[frantaylor]

is there really any motherboard company that supports any other than windows...

http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/supp...Comp_AMD_1.cfm

http://www.soekris.com/

These companies know who their customers are...

[locovaca]

1.- Availability
2.- Best features/cost relation.
3.- Passed all our tests.

Until now, there was no known policy against other system, even if they didn't support it. You could use their boards as long as your system adheres to the same standards the board was supposed to support. With this statement, Gigabyte said they don't care about specifications, so their products are trash.

Not providing support for linux is one thing, not caring to fix their faulty products is something entirely different.

Did you contact Gigabyte about getting a support agreement in place? If not, then even if you were running Windows you were going on the hope that they'd release a BIOS update to fix whatever problem you had. I would not trust any motherboard manufacturer to do that without some sort of paid agreement in place. And I've never seen a standard end user Warranty apply to software issues, only hardware ones, so if you were going to rely on that that also was misplaced.

[RealNC]

What scares the hell out of me is how many motherboard manufacturers are going to use Windows 8 digital signing and not give an option to disable it in their bios rendering trying to install any other OS useless. I can actually see venders doing this in the near future as a way of avoiding the "hassling linux bug issues".

Is there a reason why Linux can't provide signatures that allow installation?

[Tundra]

Did you contact Gigabyte about getting a support agreement in place? If not, then even if you were running Windows you were going on the hope that they'd release a BIOS update to fix whatever problem you had. I would not trust any motherboard manufacturer to do that without some sort of paid agreement in place. And I've never seen a standard end user Warranty apply to software issues, only hardware ones, so if you were going to rely on that that also was misplaced.

The thing is that this isn't MY problem, I'm not having any problem, it's THEIR faulty product. And I won't ask for any support agreement with a company that doesn't care at all when they are noticed their products are DEFECTIVE (look at it how you want, but a faulty or incomplete bios implementation makes a board defective). That's why my boss ordered me to buy a different branch.

They have two problems now, defective products and less people wanting to buy their products.

[Wyatt]

<nonsense>

Why did you write all of that? Are you worried you're not living up to your name?
There are a number of Gigabyte motherboards with Coreboot v4 support. They've had at least one chipset with support since coreboot v1.
Logitech? This: http://www.quickcamteam.net/ is "Copyright © 2011 Logitech." Go them! (In fact, I just bought a webcam from them because I saw that; it works just fine from what I can tell.)
Adobe... I'll grudgingly admit that Flash player is about two orders of magnitude more stable than it used to be and one order more performant.
This, to me, doesn't jive well with your beliefs-- maybe you should re-evaluate your opinion? As it is, you're way over-the-top and I would likely ignore you as hard as humanly possible were we to meet on the street. (Ah, being that it's 2011, I can do that here too. You've joined the same list as Q, aren't you proud?)

As for the topic, while this is a chilling response and I'm not pleased with it, I agree that it may be premature to drag out the war engines. It sucks that they have a...non-existent escalation process, but there are other avenues that have been suggested. Try them. See if Intel or AMD can put pressure on them. Or see if you can get server vendors to put pressure on the BIOS folk to fix this. Dell and HP know about and expect Linux; you think datacentre customers want faulty power regulation?

Speaking of other avenues, curious on this: can you replicate the power problem in Windows for that board?

[Wyatt]

Is there a reason why Linux can't provide signatures that allow installation?

I think I heard the UEFI signing is done by MS, but please don't quote me on that.... More importantly, though, considering the nature of OSS, having any authority sign every possible build of our four (that I know of) bootloaders by n possible versions of 7+ compilers is...unlikely.

[Khudsa]

So what is the best consumer motherboard brand for Linux?