Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-970A-D3 running 12.10 - ethernet does not work, USB 2.0 does not work

For me there are a lot of problems when trying to make Ubuntu work on that mainboard.

While the network adapter (Realtek RTL8111E/RTL8168) is detected, DHCPDISCOVER fails. I don't think this is a network problem, as it works on a different operating system on the same computer, and the same network connection works on an older computer with Ubuntu 12.10 (and a different network adapter). Using the manually compiled kernel module r8168 that Realtek provides does not fix the issue. I don't have the slightest idea what to do next, and the system is basically useless as it is.

The USB 2 ports do not work out of the box. I understand that this a known problem and appears to have something to do with ehci-hcd. I also get "failed to enumerate USB device" in dmesg which may point to yet another problem. I have not yet tried out much of the numerous workarounds that exist on the web. I wonder if the mainboard is so exotic that this should be a problem.

There are other minor problems that may be fixable with boot repair. However, the GRUB menu is totally messed up graphically, though I think this is caused by a problem with the graphics adapter.

I successfully installed Windows 7 on the same machine. No problems; however, the network card was not detected until I installed the driver that came with the mainboard.

As a long time Linux user I find that experience very frustrating.