Questions about my new PC

[onyx]

Finally my boss agreed to buy me a new PC to use at work. I didn't want him to change his mind, so I had to pick something out quick, and I didn't do as much research as I wanted to. Also, my computer knowledge has some MAJOR gaps in it because I've had no formal training; my entire experience consists of getting (mostly) junky old 16-bit programs to run in Windows NT on the (mostly) junky old Gateway and Compaq 200mhz computers at work.

Anyway, my new PC was supposedly shipped yesterday, so it should be arriving soon. Here is what it is (and I'm quoting verbatim from the vendor's specs because frankly I don't understand what some of the abbreviations mean or whether they're relevant to what I want to ask. Like I said, BIG gaps.):

Poly 880K7 ASUS-A7M266 DDR Athlon ATX MB
AMD Athlon 1.33Ghz CPU 256K 266FSB A-Cache
Cooler Fan for Thunder Bird Socket A
512MB 266MHz DDR unbuffered Memory (2100)
Maxim ATX Tower Chassis w/350W P/S
(2) IBM 60GB Ultra ATA/100 EIDE 7200rpm HD(Raid 0)
High-Point Ultra-ATA100 PCI RAID Controller
Sony 52X EIDE Internal CD ROM Drive
SoundBlaster Live MP3 PCI Card 5.1
ATI Xpert 2000 AGP W/32MB Graphic
Red Hat Linux 7.1

OK, here are my questions:

1. From browsing around on this forum, I have gotten the impression that Raid 0 is not a very good idea. Could someone explain exactly why, and what are my alternatives at this point?

2. My boss is one of those guys with a "Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ" sign over his desk, so I'm trying to learn Linux (I still plan to run NT in VmWare). My knowledge of Linux at this point pretty much extends to being able to login/logout. (My major accomplishment with it so far has been to figure out that you have to tell it to unmount the CD-ROM drive before you can eject the CD.) I had originally requested that the vendor put a CDRW drive in this system, but they told me that you have to do something special in Linux to get it to see it as a CDRW instead of a regular CD-ROM and that it was beyond the scope of their technicians. I would still like to get a CDRW in the future; can someone clue me in on which ones would be compatible with linux (I looked at hardware.redhat.com and didn't really find anything) and what I have to do to make linux see it as a CDRW?

3. With the vast experience that you guys have, are there any potential vulnerabilities/conflicts/problems that I should be aware of with this combination of hardware?

Thanks in advance for your help. Sorry to be long-winded.