Replacing OS X with Windows/Linux on aging Mac I have an old 2008 13" Macbook4,1 model (not pro) running Snow Leopard with 4GB of RAM and 160GB of HDD. It is adequate for my needs at the moment but the OS is no longer being supported by Apple (NTP bug for example). 

Thinking about the future, I am considering wiping OS X and dedicating the entire disk to Windows 7 or Linux. I've found here that Windows 7 runs well on it and Linux seemed to be ok on it when I used a recent LiveCD to test it.

So, my question is, are there any issues with removing OS X from the system completely? Will it break anything? Is it needed for anything?

EDIT: Upgrade to Lion is out too, according to wikipedia support just run out - Oct '14.

EDIT2: Apparently OS X is needed for firmware updates. But since this is a 2008 MacBook, it is extremely unlikely they will release new firmware for it.
Do you have the original install disks for Mac OS X? If so, there shouldn't be any issues with wiping the Mac partition completely off the hdd. 

However, if you don't have those disks, I would strongly recommend keeping the Mac OS X install and creating a new partition (shrinking the Mac partition) for the new OS. Mainly because if something goes wrong (or if you don't like either alternative) it's much easier to recover a MacBook using the Mac OS. I think you can get away with 5-10GB for the Snow Leopard partition. 

If you have the original install disks, you shouldn't have an issue with restoring it. 

Linux will take some tinkering to get working properly. I had a particularly rough time getting wifi to work in Ubuntu 12.blah on an older MacBook Pro. Plus side: With a laptop that old, there should be a decent amount of documentation for making your hardware work with Linux. I'd stick with Ubuntu if you like fancy, or Linux Mint if you like simple. Windows 7 (if installed through Bootcamp) works pretty well without much hassle.