EVGA Z77 Stinger (mITX)
producer:
http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=111-IB-E692-KR
review:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Motherboards/EVGA-Z77-Stinger-mini-ITX-Motherboard-Review
the review says that this motherboard comes with an Atheros bluetooth adapter onboard. should this work with Trisquel and free drivers?
As far as I'm aware, Atheros bluetooth chipsets do not work with free software, as they require proprietary firmware.
The only Atheros bluetooth thing listed in h-node.org doesn't: http://h-node.org/bluetooth/catalogue/en/1/1/Atheros
I am a member!
I believe there are only a few Bluetooth chipsets from Atheros available and these include the: AR3001, AR3002, AR3011, and AR3012. All of these use the ath3k driver/firmware. The driver is free software friendly although the firmware is not.
I would suggest avoiding boards with Atheros bluetooth for the moment. Although this is less of a concern than getting a board with say an NVIDIA/ATI graphics chipset. Atheros has been very cooperative in releasing code whereas NVIDIA/AMD have not (at least not sufficient code/specs). The majority of companies do not release source code for firmware.
Until we can get Atheros to release the source code to this firmware I'd suggest getting a USB dongle with a CSR chipset. This is fully supported in GNU/Linux (and free software friendly).
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-usb-bluetooth-micro-adapter