I have seen a lot of interesting references to Varnish and would like to play with it. However, I run Windows XP and don't have an extra machine available to run linux, nor do I have much linux skill. I would like to install linux under some virtualization software so I can evaluate Varnish and it's VCL.
Any way to run Linux as a Virtual Machine on top of Windows so can have best of both worlds? gave me some good tips. I am fine with using either Virtual PC (which I use now) or VirtualBox (which seems like a good choice). Any recommendations on which of these to use?
Next, which linux distro makes the most sense. I don't really need a desktop version if I just want to play with a networking level application. I'd prefer something that didn't take up much disk space and was either easy to setup, or even already mostly setup on a virtual hard drive. Something that had Varnish and any dependencies installed would be the best option.