hardware specific questions relating to working with Ubuntu

The ATi chip will be supported by the proprietary driver, NewEgg haven't given enough detail about the chips on the board to accurately tell if there will be issues:

Onboard Audio
Audio Channels 8 Channels

Means nothing to us, is it a realtek? Is it an nvidia sound chip? We can't tell due to lacking information. It's sites like these tat tell the user zero information which makes them hard to buy from in this situation. You will either have to take the plunge, wait for a user with this EXACT board to reply (hugely unlikely) or grab a PCI sound card which is known to work.

You can check the HCL for more clarification. Maybe the board is listed there
http://www.ubuntuhcl.org/browse/search+motherboards?category=7

at the link u provided it was not there at all, but I did find what the onboard audio is thru going to MSI website and downloading the manual with regards to the onboard audio here http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=manual&maincat_no=1&prod_no=1856 and it says its Audio
■ Chip Integrated by Realtek® ALC889/ ALC888S/ ALC885 ■ Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing ■ Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec now with the different ALCXXXX this manual is for a few Mobo's one of them being the one I like to get the MSI 790XT-G45.. it would help tho if u also took a look at the PDF tho just to be sure there are no other issues... cause the manual itself is way better then newegg specs listing..

It's not detailed enough really but should be ok. You only get issues with really fancy sound chips like Creative Audigy things which people insist on buying then get TONNES of problems with. I'd say go for it, looks like a decent board.

Yea i know its a decent board, partly why im doing this instead of buying an already made one that to me is more questionable with regards to warranty and lame OS's like winblows lol but Im gonna keep this open until i get it all as well just in case, and I have never built a PC before, but Im not doing it myself, My bro has done it tho for his education, so I'll be there to watch things, im nervous about doing like installing CPU, RAM i could do lol but thank u tho cause I tend to think this should work really well with any type of Linux...... but when u say detailed, Im kinda wondering what u mean by that, as in what are you looking for?

Do it yourself dude, the only hard bit is putting the board in the case but you simply have to line up the holes in the board with the holes in the case, put the legs in then screw the board into them. After that you just put stuff where it fits and it will be fine.

Lets see if anyone else can contribute.

in a way i am doing it myself but I still like my bro to help since he has more experience then I, and I trust him completely... he's a bit excited by all this hardware as well.. and knows how careful u need to be, and personally i dont have the steady hands really to do it myself... and this is partly cause of my 2 decades long struggle with type 1 diabetes...