I really miss my debian box which was on my old computer, so when i plan on getting this silent always on VIA box i was hoping to put the linux back on

Are their any compatibility issues with the motherboard, processor, and all the on-board add-ins and OS?

Also on a side-note does anyone recommend a TV-tuner and dvd-drive that works well with linux? I'd like the comp to work as a home entertainment system as well

I'm not sure what all they ship with, but walmart.com ships via c3 based linux boxes for about $400, I think, so some form of the C3 platform is working well enough for a consumer product. There was a website that seemed to be collecting via epia + linux info, but all that's left is what's in google's cache
here

That site links to Via Arena's linux site as a good source of info.

There are even Linux drivers for the Epia's .

I have an Epia running under FreeBSD 4.7 without any problems .. so I'm guessing it should work just fine under linux.

If you are going to use debian specifically certain via chipsets can be a bit of a pain. I never managed to get the via8233 audio going under my setup in a P4 box. However, I think the epia support is alot better.

A good combo drive to use under linux is the samsung 16x10x32x8 or 32x12x40x8 (i think) DVD CDRW. I use one of these in my stealth box (xp 1800 nforce gf2 & dolby all on board) with video::lan & is great to watch dvds & divx on.

yea out of the distros i've tried (slackware, redhat, debian) my favorite one was debian. However, it's really no big deal if i can't get the deb box working straight out of the box. In fact, I think this would be a great opportunity for me to try out Linux from scratch.

Besides buying parts that try to be more silent, i also plan on putting the tower in a cabinet so i can't even hear that air whoosing. That'd be bliss. Also hook up a nice projector, add in some surround sound, and that's a perfect system.

The AIW cards are very appealing, but i don't know. I don't really feel that i want the comp to be used for gaming, so getting a radeon feels like overkill and a waste of money... Are there any other tv-tuner cards available for a more modest price that's just specifically a tv-tuner? That what i plan to use the 1 PCI slot on the mini-itx board for.

I just built up a playin' around box that I am multibooting Win98SE, Win2K, and RedHat 8 on. The motherboard is a fully integrated Via C3M266 socket 370 board and I am using a C3/800. I am using onboard sound, video, and LAN.

First, somewhat off-topic, there are no NT4 drivers for this board, which I found disappointing but somewhat understandable. I wanted to run NT4 rather than Win2K.

Second, RedHat 8 installed easily (for the most part), with one exception -- video. I had to go with the generic VGA driver after the install. OK, no problem, I'll just download Linux drivers for this board and all will be right as rain. Well, I went to the product page and the only drivers that were available were Win32. Strange, considering this $75 mobo/cpu combo would be perfect for building a low-cost system witha free OS. It took several minutes of Googling to find anything close, at viaarena.com However, their Linux drivers didn't include CLE266 drivers for RedHat 8, so I'm probably stuck for now (the RH7.3 drivers may work, but I'm not a Linux expert and don't want to trash the install)

Pete