Ardour does not have significantly higher requirements than other audio software and should work just fine with any decent-ish machine. The audio interface is really up to you, it's just a matter of sound quality. If onboard audio suits you, then who are we to judge?
I myself used the onboard audio with an external mixer for quite a while. I've since upgraded to a 24 track FireWire rig assembled from cheap used hardware that no longer ran on Mac or Windows because of obsolete drivers. In-tree drivers is major advantage of Linux when it comes to hardware support.
I myself used the onboard audio with an external mixer for quite a while. I've since upgraded to a 24 track FireWire rig assembled from cheap used hardware that no longer ran on Mac or Windows because of obsolete drivers. In-tree drivers is major advantage of Linux when it comes to hardware support.