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I need a recomendation for a good motherboard and accompianing CPU. Here's what I'm looking for.

Compatible with Linux
plenty of USB ports
plenty of sata ports, may be a dual boot Linux/Windows/SteamOS

Although I don't currently do a lot of high end gaming, or gaming at all, but I would like the option to do so if I get the urge. Thanks.

Edited by lewashby
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Short practical summary for (and thanks to for the general build-pointer): pick a mainstream ATX board from a major vendor, prefer the motherboard to use the CPU-maker’s native chipset and an Intel wired NIC, and add a proper HBA if you need lots of SATA ports. That approach keeps driver issues to a minimum on modern distributions. (linux-hardware.org)

If you need many SATA ports, don’t rely on cheap third‑party “more SATA” chips on consumer boards (ASMedia/Marvell); they can require out‑of‑tree firmware/drivers or show instability. For lots of spinning disks or many drives, use a known LSI/Broadcom SAS HBA (IT/JBOD mode) — those are well supported by the mpt3sas driver in mainline kernels. For a few extra ports, a powered USB hub or a quality PCIe USB card from a supported vendor is simpler. (marvell.com)

USB: make sure the board has a proper xHCI (USB3) controller and check the kernel’s support for the specific controller — some vendor PCIe USB chips need firmware or have had kernel regressions in the past. For gaming: AMD’s open stack (amdgpu + Mesa) is tightly integrated with recent kernels; NVIDIA offers good proprietary drivers but they sometimes require matching kernel/module packaging. Plan your GPU choice around the driver model you prefer. (kernelconfig.io)

Quick pre‑buy checklist and probes to run on any candidate board or seller photo: search the board model on linux-hardware.org and the Arch/Debian wikis; look for reports about Ethernet, USB, SATA; check vendor BIOS update cadence. Before purchase, ask or test with these commands on a live USB (or ask the seller for lspci output): 

lspci -nnk
lsusb
dmesg | tail -n 200
# optional: probe and upload a report (helps linux-hardware.org)
# sudo hw-probe -all -upload

Also plan UEFI installs and disable Windows “Fast Startup” if you’ll dual‑boot to avoid NTFS/boot problems. (linux-hardware.org)

Recommendation framed this way keeps the buying decision evergreen: pick a board with Intel/AMD native controllers (for NIC/SATA), a vendor with active BIOS updates, and use an LSI HBA if you need many drives — that gives the smoothest Linux experience and preserves the option to add a gaming GPU later.

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