In the comments of the last entry, Mr Ben asked how Windows coped with the same setup.
Now, my initial attempt to install Windows 7 did not go much better, (or should that be beta, haw haw), but, with this setup:
The reason there is a separate boot drive to the RAID is because Windows doesn’t see my RAID card natively, so I have to set that up afterwards. The 1024 cylinder thing would still be an issue, but when I tried that it warned me before I did it (so I didn’t). The graphics drivers Just Work, too, and don’t require either a reboot or restarting the window manager. OTOH, I installed Linux because I couldn’t get a debugging development environment working, so it’s swings and roundabouts.