ball screws are better, more expensive, and more rigid. to get them longer than ~50 inches you probably want to either get ones with a very high lead angle, or

ball screws are better, more expensive, and more rigid. to get them longer than ~50 inches you probably want to either get ones with a very high lead angle, or use ones with a driven ball nut design. R&P works totally fine for wood and aluminum, and is significantly cheaper and easier to implement. Once consideration is that in driven ball nuts and R&P the motor must traverse with the moving axis. In standard ballscrew config the motor can be static which makes cables and packaging easier.