Replacing OSX 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 OSX 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 OSX 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 OSX is needed for firmware updates. But since this is a 2008 macbook, it is extremely unlikely they will release new firmware for it.