Yes, if you want to retain the sonic characteristics of the CD when you rip, lossless encoders are perfectly valid.

They don't get you a 50% smaller file, you will usually end up with a file that is somewhere around 65-75% of the original size.

I have read multiple sources that have done testing with lossless formats and in every case, when the data was uncompressed back to raw audio track it was exactly a bit for bit copy of what was on the CD.

Given that, ripping to RAW gives you no benefit over ripping to FLAC or other lossless codecs.