**Short Answer:** There is a simple solution to your problem. Just install the **virtual-machine with Linux (Ubuntu)** - it is free.

I am also a mainly .NET developer who loves to experiment different things, or try variety of frameworks and/or development tools. The **main thing here is not to mess your main development environment.** Thus, installing everything in a Virtual machine (the native OS, frameworks, configuring and setting them up, etc.) for the type of development you intended to do is the most logical and optimal way to go.

**Edit:** You may consider different virtualization solution to build your VM. My personal preference go with [**VirtualBox**][1]. It is a free x86 virtualization solution allowing a wide range of x86 operating systems such as Windows, DOS, BSD or Linux to run on a Linux system.


 [1]: https://www.virtualbox.org/