Asus P4P800-E Deluxe is a mainboard for high-end workstation. Actually, it is good enough to be medium-size server, e.g., web server, mail server, database server, and file server. Actually, this problem happened to my friend. He used to install Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition on this machine without properly. However, he decided to switch to Unix compatible OS because he had replaced both system harddisk and data harddisk due to harddisk failure. This machine has 1.5 GB RAM and he decreased virtual memory on system drive (C:) to zero. In addition, he never keep any files or even tried to read files on that drive. That’s why I suggested him to change operating system.

There are 2 choices. FreeBSD and Linux. FreeBSD seems to be better for server application but running Java is not as easy as Linux can serve him. Finally he chose Linux because he wants to run Java also. At that moment, he only had RedHat 9 CDs so he tried to install them on P4P800-E Deluxe. Unfortunately, the installation stopped, actually hanged, at message "Loading ata_piix". It seemed there was some problem with mainboard and the driver in RedHat 9. I suggested him to try Centos 4.2. He got the same problem. I advise him to apply additional option as follow.

1. acpi=off
2. pci=noacpi

He got no luck. However, he tried to install FreeBSD and it succeeded so quick. Now he is trying to install other Linux distros such as Ubuntu. Ubuntu is now my favorite Linux distros since last year. It is much easier and much more stable than RedHat. And at last, there are so many pre-compiled software packages ready to install on Ubuntu by default.

I will let you know the progress of this problem very soon. My friend is being downloaded the ISO image.

Updated: Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy has been installed successfully and smoothly. If you get this kind of problem, please try Ubuntu.

Technorati Tags: English, IT, Software, Tips and Tricks, Linux, RedHat, Fedora, Centos, Ubuntu, Asus, Mainboard, FreeBSD