In the next few months I will be do a number of upgrades (OS, hardware, and network) to the machines around my house. One of the things I'm considering doing going full gigabit. All my switches are fast ethernet, but all but one of my NICs can do gigabit. So I want to upgrade that one. The only open slot I have that machine is PCIe x1. Anybody recommend a low cost, just works (running ubuntu 8.04LTS on this machine) PCIe x1 gigabit NIC?

While you are at it, I take recommendations on gigabit switches and wireless N routers :) - but I know there are plenty of reviews and discussions on those already.

TIA.

Intel has a $30 gigabit card. Just works with recent kernel versions with e1000e driver, not sure about your kernel version. Worse case scenario, you download the driver from Intel, not a big deal.

personally I like the netgear GS108T. It has some smart switch functions, but is also very affordable. As far as wireless N, I just use mine in bridged mode with wpa2 personal (apple airport extreme). I have a dedicated and dependable firewall/router appliance that sits next to my cable modem. Wireless routers are just not stable enough in my opinion for the dependable drudgery of a firewall/router for your network. Plus, the N standard is still in flux.

This Rosewill works in Linux and is low cost-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166019

This Intel card is well supported linux of course-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033

Here is another Linux compatible PCIe Gb card-

http://www.outletpc.com/c4567.html

Here is another $15 card, but you'll have to do the research to find out Linux compatibility (just google for the model number/chipset)

http://www.outletpc.com/c4498.html