Ubuntu 11.10 VS. Windows Vista on older PC

[whooleo]

I recently acquired some older PC parts (circa 2005/2006) from a friend and built the following PC with them:

Motherboard: ASUS P5WD2 Premium socket LGA 775 (not Core 2 compatible unfortunately)

CPU: Pentium 4 540J 3.2GHz 1MB L2 with Hyper Threading (90nm Prescott)

GPU: GeForce 7600 GS 512MB PCIE (passive cooler with lower clocked memory-8GB/s)

Misc: CD-Drive 52X Floppy Drive 1.44MB

PSU: Antec model SL3505 350 watts 21 amps on 12v rail

HDD: 2 Western Digitals 80GB PATA/IDE (same exact drives)

RAM:512MB DDR2 (going to upgrade to 1.5GB or 2GB)

Now I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on it with the drives in RAID 0 with decent performance, but I'm debating whether to install Vista Business x86 instead because this build will possibly be for my 12 yr old little cousin who likes to play older PC games like UT 2004, Halo CE, Star Wars Republic Commando, and other older stuff but most aren't for Linux or didn't go so well for Ubuntu 11.10 (not a linux pro but 10.10 was better and I don't feel like messing with the terminal all day). But the thing is I'm not sure if this Mobo has IDE RAID drivers for Vista and if it does I don't know if I should give up Ubuntu for Vista. Which one would be a better OS to use?

 

[inzone]

Why not make two partitions and have both operating ststems and then choose which one to boot to.

 

[whooleo]

Because I want to do RAID 0 and keep it simple, and this PC is probably going to be for my 12 year old cousin.

 

[Sunius]

Have you considered Windows XP?

 

[FinneousPJ]

Linux for work, Windows for fun.

 

[whooleo]

Yes I have considered XP but the RAID drivers I tried to load at boot up (F6) didn't work XP said that the driver file was corrupt even when using the bundled utility to write to floppy, could try again though and I think XP would be better this machine.

 

[dish_moose]

It's for a 12 yr old - keep it simple - do you need RAID?
-Bruce

 

[de5_Roy]

i hear windows 8.0 is hardware friendly. and you can run win 7 on a 512 mb (ram) pc with some tweaking. rest of the build looks fine.
vista...well, between ubuntu and vista ubuntu might be the better os, you can tweak it to do anything you want. imo xp might be better than vista. vista's(dunno about the business edition) uac is annoying.
will wine or something similar be able to run the games on linux?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

I'd load XP and not fret RAID on a 12-year-old's PC.

 

[whooleo]

But what I'm I going to do with the other HDD though? and not using RAID 0 but having the potential goes against everything in my enthusist bones lol. and why not Vista my experiance is pretty good with it and it is a newer OS with a longer life.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

vista was a messy OS. a repeat of the ME disaster. XP or 7 is better.

 

[whooleo]

Hehe why so? And what I'm I going to with the other hdd?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

Slow, bloated, memory leaks, poor multi-thread handling, and too much overhead for typical RAM values in 2006.

 

[whooleo]

True but these points may be null cause the hardware is good enough to run it and it's newer, supported for longer, and is more secure (UAC has come in handy in several cases even if its annoying)

 

[mrmotion]

It sounds like you already made up your mind chief. Put vista on it and move on.

 

[whooleo]

lol maybe... probably...yeah

 

[whooleo]

though one question still remains, what the hell I'm I going to do with that other drive? Maybe for extra storage for the PC or maybe keep it in case the first one goes bad I can plop that extra one in I don't know what do you guys think?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

just set it up as the D:\ drive.

 

[whooleo]

I guess but who will be the best answer all of helped a lot so I don't know?

 

[whooleo]

Best answer selected by whooleo.