If you wanna run Linux inside a VM then you should definitely consider Arch Linux. It's got all the basic Unix tools you've mentioned plus an extremely simple

If you wanna run Linux inside a VM then you should definitely consider Arch Linux. It's got all the basic Unix tools you've mentioned plus an extremely simple package management system. Most of the system configuration lives in a single file (/etc/rc.conf). If you need help, there are lots of very high quality articles on the Arch wiki (http://wiki.archlinux.org http://wiki.archlinux.org), and the folks at #archlinux on irc.freenode.net are super helpful.