The Intel card I experimented with was actually an on-board card that was listed as an Etherexpress PRO 100/VE if I remember right. The thing would lock up the machine tight with no error message whatsoever. Occasionally, just before the hang, I'd get some errors about a timeout on the console. I ended up using an Intel driver and all my problems went away. This was with the 2.2.19 and 2.4.10 kernels under Slackware 8.0. I really don't know if the situation is better now for sure, but I do know that looking at the Change Logs for the kernels up to 2.4.19 indicates that a lot of work has gone into that particular driver, so I suspect it's better now.
