[entropicgravity]

I use Linux Mint for a similar host set up. Its worth it to move away from virtualBox to the open source versions as I did recently, KVM etc.

There are quite a few paper cuts in setting it up the first time. I recall it took about five hours before I finally had my first VM in the right place, with right size of disk space and ram and the version of linux I wanted. But after the learning curve it becomes very easy. Honest :)