[JimDabell]

No, it doesn't matter what platform you are developing on or deploying to, if you are working on server-side stuff, use a VM.

It's not about needing tools from Linux, it's about keeping your development environment and your deployment environment separate. Otherwise all sorts of unwanted dependencies can creep in and it's difficult to reproduce the correct deployment environment outside of your development environment. If you manage your deployment correctly from the start, it's a hell of a lot easier.

For instance, if you install a web server in your case-insensitive development environment, write a load of code, then deploy to a case-sensitive deployment environment, then you may inadvertently introduce errors because you got the case wrong somewhere in your code. You introduced a dependency upon a development environment property that wasn't present in your deployment environment and things broke.

The environment you write code in and the environment you have to execute that code in are often very different things. Mixing them up is bad news – that's where virtual machines help you out by keeping the two separate.