Just out of curiousity, do you use something like this: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/virtualbox ? Any other recommendations on how to install and start working with Ubuntu VM?

When I was using Windows, I preferred VMWare Workstation [1]; the number of times that VirtualBox entered the "Guru Meditation" state and cost me a half-day of debugging was just too high to justify.

If the price tag is too high, or you're just doing personal projects, I'd recommend VMWare Player [2] -- it's a free version with slightly fewer features. Last time I used it I think it didn't have snapshots, which can be useful in some cases, but aren't a deal-breaker.

Having said that, a few colleagues used VirtualBox and found it to be OK; it seemed to stabilize a bit a year or two after I had problems with it (in 2015).

[1]: http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation.html [2]: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/playerpro-evaluation.h...

Missed your second question there -- I've always just installed Ubuntu from scratch on the VM guest. I've done that enough times that it doesn't feel like a lot of work to me.

VirtualBox does have a nice feature that automates the installer, as well.

I've never bothered with the whole Vagrant thing for personal dev machines, given the low cost of spinning up a new machine, it's not worth learning a new toolchain for me. But if I was spending more than a few hours every couple years on building new VMs, it would be worth it.