+1 for Apples. I have run virtual machines in the past when necessary, but I find that I don't do it anymore as there isn't any software I have to use right now that doesn't run natively. OS X has a few decent package managers, though none as good as apt-get or portage, so that might be a concern if you're used to that kind of thing. If you're not aware that the software you mentioned is available for OS X and specifically mentioned ubuntu, i'm willing to bet that's not the case…but I have a bad image of ubuntu users, mostly because I used gentoo back when I was on linux.
Lately, instead of running Linux in a VM, I've been messing with EC2 micro instances. At .02/h, it's fairly inexpensive, and the load isn't on your own machine.
