try XF86Setup for the install of the card.It wont give you any better driver but its easy to setup a SVGA server that will give you 800*640,just pick a generic monitor thats close to specs or yours if its listed.The default vga of 640*480 is shite.As for raid...every where I go the Promise drivers dont work.If you want raid checkout
http://www.linuxdoc.org and do a search for software raid.its not to hard to setup.IDE is a CPU hog so the tiny difference between your raid card and software wont be an issue.If you want true blow my head off wow this is fast raid,then save those pennies and get a scsi raid controller and a couple of scsi disks to start.