Used VMPlayer 9 to create an Ubuntu 12.04.02 64-bit VM.

Non-default settings:

• 40 GB hard drive
• ~2GB RAM (I only have 2GB RAM, so it's capped by that)
• Single file
• USB 3.0 pass through (in the hardware settings)

Download the VM tools for Linux.

VM image setup

Run this command:

sudo apt-get install vim libncurses5-dev gcc make git exuberant-ctags