What's a good way to set up a virtual linux dev enviroment?

[MuffinZerg]

I want to get ruby on rails running properly, so I decided it would be good to set up a virtual linux machine which could be used later with other projects too.

I got Oracle Virtual Box and installed ubuntu on a virtual machine.
The machine was given:
~50 gbs of storage space
1,4 gbs RAM
1 CPU core

Apparetly it runs very slow, even on desktop. Windows feels okay with ubuntu running though. I optimized my virtual machine as much as I could with the help of some internet guides, didn't help much.

My question is - is all hope lost for my poor laptop or can I still find a way to properly run a virtual linux machine?

My laptop's available resources:

1,6 GHz processor
3,2 gbs RAM

[Flapadar]

I know I'm probably a bit bias being an employee of a VPS provider, but I'd recommend a VPS - on the resources you've got you aren't going to get decent performance when a cheap VPS would.

[asciid]

You could write on windows to a folder that is shared with your VM. Then rather than using the desktop environment to launch your stuff, just use putty.

[StinkyJoe]

If you're looking for a full desktop environment like Ubuntu on that host machine, you're pretty much fucked. You can either ditch the environment and work off the terminal / shared folder, or try a lighter environment such as (in reverse order of lightness) xfce*, lxde or omnibox.

* Xubuntu is pretty lightweight and gives you pretty sane defaults as you get on Ubuntu.

[MuffinZerg]

[QUOTE=StinkyJoe;42175725]If you're looking for a full desktop environment like Ubuntu on that host machine, you're pretty much fucked. You can either ditch the environment and work off the terminal / shared folder, or try a lighter environment such as (in reverse order of lightness) xfce*, lxde or omnibox.

* Xubuntu is pretty lightweight and gives you pretty sane defaults as you get on Ubuntu.[/QUOTE]
I will try xubuntu

[Comfy]

Ubuntu's Desktop environment Unity is pretty resource intensive. Over the time it has improved quite a bit, but it's still very demanding.

Unity runs slow even on many desktops and notebooks.

[Acid_Burn]

I recommend Vagrant, I use that on my Mac and run all my tools on the host OS.

[Pawnstick]

[url=http://www.vagrantup.com/]Vagrant[/url] is a much better option for what you want to do, it uses VirtualBox but you're not running a desktop environment.

[Loli]

[QUOTE=Acid_Burn;42193135]I recommend Vagrant, I use that on my Mac and run all my tools on the host OS.[/QUOTE]

I can whole heartedly recommend this!