So I want to test some things out on a web server, so I want to download Ubuntu Server and put it on VirtualBox on my Windows desktop. How well does that work? I'm not going to be doing anything major on it. Or would dual-booting Linux do a better job? (I'm already doing that) Thanks!

It's just a matter of preference. If you're already dual booting Linux it should be easy enough. Just download VirtualBox, go through the steps to create a new machine, and then boot it up. It will ask you for an iso and it should be familiar from there.

Racer500 wrote:

So I want to test some things out on a web server, so I want to download Ubuntu Server and put it on VirtualBox on my Windows desktop. How well does that work? I'm not going to be doing anything major on it. Or would dual-booting Linux do a better job? (I'm already doing that) Thanks!

If the only thing you want is to setup a webserver, you can use XAMPP or WAMP on windows

robinp wrote:

If the only thing you want is to setup a webserver, you can use XAMPP or WAMP on windows

Well, I also wanted to try either running Discourse or MediaWiki just to see how it works, and I wanted it to be in a Virtual Machine so it wouldn't disrupt any files and I wasn't going to keep it continuously running.

Racer500 wrote:

robinp wrote:

If the only thing you want is to setup a webserver, you can use XAMPP or WAMP on windows

Well, I also wanted to try either running Discourse or MediaWiki just to see how it works, and I wanted it to be in a Virtual Machine so it wouldn't disrupt any files and I wasn't going to keep it continuously running.

I would recommend using XAMPP or WAMPP instead of a wm as you can start and stop it much quicker. I would only recommend a WM if you need to host a linux only webapp which mediawiki isn't.

A wm also uses a lot of your system resources.