For the selection of motherboards, is there any naming convention in the type numbers? There is usually a brand name and sometimes a version name, but more essential details like form factor, SATA speed and maximum amount of RAM is never given. Is there a reason for that? Is there any background used to the current motherboard names?
Competition not cooperation drives this industry. The motherboard is a vague area between a lot of accessories that you hope it supports well. Much of it is designed by the chip set guys, and mostly they take away more often than they add. It is a deep pond, especially when you start considering high end workstations and servers. There are some caveats about clock seed and ram speed matching, that are a big read in and of themselves. There are a few sites that compare a lot.
The big pluspoint is that I have yet to come across a motherboard that will not support Linux or FreeBSD, at least for anything manufactured after about 2004. Even BIOS upgrades are very rare.