[genwin]

Your setup is close to mine, which is Win 7 running VirtualBox and Linux Mint. I've not used a Mac. I like developing with Linux. A friend recommends ditching my double-OS setup in favor of Apple. My question to you is, why don't you use only Apple / Mountain Lion? Why bother with Win 8?

[dualogy]

If you like to combine the Win desktop environment with the Linux dev environment, other than VirtualBox you could also check out MinGW if you haven't yet.