Choosing a motherboard for building Linux systems

I am building a network of Linux machines that will...
- behave as routers / WLAN access points / LAN-over mains switches
- stream audio to and from each other

The first thing to do is choose which motherboard to buy.

My target spec is now...

- audio SPDIF header which has input pin as well as output pin
- well suited for desktop Debian Linux
- very common chipset to ensure compatibility
- doesn't have to be high performance
- low cost
- known to be sold in high volumes / commonly used so plenty of Linux drivers
- ideally dual (or more) LAN ports

Anybody have any suggestions...?

Thanks in advance,
Doug.

I've had good experience with ASUS boards generally. Though if you're going for ease and value you might consider an all Intel board, certainly easier than having nVidia chipsets.

FWIW, I just built a new system using a BioStar GF7100P-M7S MoBo & Pentium DC E5200 CPU and it seems to be working flawlessly w/ Fedora 8 - only has 1 LAN onboard (gigabit) but has 2 PCI slots so you could easily add another gigabit LAN card, since those are pretty cheap now.

Not sure where you are, but cost for the MoBo at Fry's Electronics here was $60 USD (and the gigabit LAN PCI cards are going for about $5 USD).

Do you want support for dual CPU's?