ASUS A8N-SLI SE and Linux

I'd say the mainboard is well supported on Linux. I was able to install core of the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1/sarge unofficial amd64 port on the machine. Note the onboard network card is not supported in the sarge Linux kernel -- if you want to perform a network installation, you must use an additional supported network card (as I did).

After the base installation I upgraded to Linux 2.6.16. My observations with that kernel are:

• The onboard network card works well (in the 100 Mbit/s mode).
• The onboard sound card works with analog stereo output at least, but I had to run alsaconf before I could use it. The system used to freeze with some music players (e.g. AmaroK or Totem; some other players worked well), but the same event happened with a SoundBlaster PCI sound card too so it was probably a general OS problem, perhaps related to 64-bit or Linux-VServer usage. With recent Linux kernels and other software updates the problem seems to be gone.
• lm-sensors shows reasonable values from the sensors, although the reported allowed ranges are mostly wrong and you have to set up them manually.
• Cool`n'Quiet works well with the latest version of powernowd (0.97) and a dual core processor.
• When using a USB keyboard, the keyboard either freezes or starts to repeat the last pressed key very soon once you start to use it after boot. It must be unplugged and plugged in again, after that it works well. A PS/2 keyboard doesn't have this problem.

Some additional observations not specific to Linux:

• You can enable fan speed regulation (Q-Fan) in BIOS. The mainboard manual says the CPU and rear case fans are regulated, with an additional unclear notice about the chipset fan. Indeed, only the CPU fan is actually regulated (and this works very well), while the chipset and front case fans run at their full speeds all the time despite the reported temperatures are around 30°C (so I've reduced their speeds and noise by attaching manual speed regulators to them without any apparent effect on the reported temperatures). The rear case fan is not regulated in my case because it is connected directly to the power supply.

How to make ALSA dmix work with the onboard sound card

I had to define the mixing ALSA device with the following parameters:

pcm.dmixer {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"  # adjust this to your actual card position
        period_time 0
        period_size 512
        buffer_size 4096
    }
}
    

Milan Zamazal <pdm@zamazal.org>
Last modified: 2006-07-27 17:03 UTC.