Solaris was always extremely stable on the supercomputer at Uni., 'though they use Red Hat now (and Fedora on personal workstations).
I had to set my machine up to use the NT Bootloader (Windows) to boot my Linux/AROS installs; if you have trouble, I should be able to help, it is really hard to find the info. online (it was when I looked [struggled], anyway)...
You could do worse than install VMware Server also. I rarely boot directly into Windows ever, and AROS runs in it quite well. That extra RAM will come in handy, too. By the indicated spec., however, you might not want to rely on the vmware, but it would be superfine for AROS.
IMO, anyway.
jaminJay
"What you can't get for free must be worth something, surely?"
