Andy,
I think you'll find plenty of people have cut their teeth on machines built from wood and are ether happy with what they can do or use the confidence gained from the experience to push ahead with a more capable machine built from steel or aluminum. What sort of things are you planning to make? Decorative signs and carvings or more complex items with multiple pieces that will need to fit accurately together?

Re the controller: I used LinuxCNC for several years and was happy with it, but the parallel interface suffered interference problems and I've recently changed to using an AXBB-E controller whch is Ethernet connected a laptop running the matching UCCNC software. It proved simple to install and has worked without any problems so far.

Kit