On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:57:22AM -0500, Clint Moyer wrote:

Are there any gotchas using a CPU with integrated GPU? Not talking about mobo chipset graphic, but something like an AMD CPU with embedded ATI graphic.

My experiences are with Intel embedded graphics which have excellent open source support.

I haven't yet dealt with any motherboard with UEFI bios. I know there was a big uproar over Secure Boot. Is this going to give me any headache installing Linux? Is there any specific manufacturer that implements it more properly than others? Asus has been my goto brand.

FWIW, Fedora works fine with UEFI and Secure Boot enabled. I'm dual-booting Windows 8 and Fedora 18 on an Asus X202E. The Atheros ethernet driver (alx) is very new and has unresolved issues after resuming from suspend. I've gotten along without wired ethernet when alx wasn't in the kernel yet (it appeared in 3.10), so I just blacklisted the alx driver in 3.11 for now until it is fixed. I also had an issue with the screen going black after bootup, but that was fixed in kernel 3.11. Before that was available, I stayed on 3.9.9.

I'll retain my current HDDs for storage but would like to use an SSD for the OSes. I'd assume that's pretty transparent as far as installing Linux goes? Anything I need to worry about here?

Nothing to worry about on modern OSes. They should all support TRIM and do the proper data alignment for SSDs. You might want to make sure TRIM has been enabled after installing.