It's very unusual for network card not to be recognized by nvoc. Not impossible, but unusual.
Since you have extensive Windows experience, have you tried installing Windows on that motherboard to confirm it is not a hardware failure?
If your network card works well under Windows we can rule out defective hardware and try to troubleshoot further.
What are you trying to mine? If you are planning on mining an Ethash coin; If you are having trouble with the community edition: I recommend trying vBasic as that motherboard should be supported by it.
The Community Release edition was based and built upon nvoc 19-1.4 which is built on top of Ubuntu 16.04. If I understand correctly the vBASIC version is also built on top of Ubuntu 16.04. This should not be specific problem tied to the Community Release and if in fact it is related to base Ubuntu 16.04 than it will affect both, the Community Release and vBASIC release. It seems like his motherboard is defective.