Last time I bought a new computer (I build them myself) I got a motherboard that had really poor linux support for a long time. Specifically the audio. I had to wait months before the kernel supported the on board audio chipset. That is exactly the situation I'm trying to avoid this time around.

I have some specific questions about "server motherboards" actually. I looked at a few models of server motherboards by intel, and some random models on newegg. I wasn't able to see much of a difference from regular desktop motherboard other than most had two sockets, and support for much more ram. These boards seem more popular with Linux users. Why?

AMD and Intel both have server CPUs as well. Some question, what's the difference?

To make this question more concrete, I was looking at this this motherboard. The main questions about it that I can't answer are:

• Can I get a motherboard without on board raid and audio? I wanted to get a hardware raid controller and a PCI audio card. I thought a server motherboard would be cheaper and not have these "extras", since who wants an audio card on a server?
• Where can I found out about Linux support for the components on this board? "Intel ICH10R", "Realtek ALC889", "Marvell 88E8056"

I'm buying this computer to work as a Linux desktop for a lot of compiling, coding and audio/video work, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of installing windows and playing some games at one point. (even if the last game I got has been sitting in its box unopened for almost a year). Is it a good idea to buy a "server motherboard" and play games on it, or are desktop boards better value for this?

The ultimate solution for me would be a motherboard that had GPL divers for onboard LAN, a single CPU socket, lots of PCI express and PCI. USB 3.0, and no fancy hard disk controllers since I'll be getting a separate one.