Literally, for a first look on malware, You don't need any env locally installed. There are pretty enough online sandboxes You may use:

virustotal.com have it's sandbox implemented, using Cuckoo Sandbox. When You apply new sample, it automatically executed as part of analysis. After about 10-15 mins You see result in "Behavioural information"

anubis.iseclab.org is another place You may submit binary to see it behavior before executing it locally. Here You got report and pcap file of network activity, if any.

as a result - You may get basic idea of what binary do and how to analyse it. But - please note, that sophisticated malware check env for sandbox traces and VM presence. So there is a chance, that "harmless binary" in sandbox appear to be sophisticated malware in real conditions.

Literally, for a first look on malware, you won't need anything special locally installed. There are enough online sandboxes you may use:

• virustotal.com have their sandbox implemented using Cuckoo Sandbox. When you apply new sample, it automatically executed as part of analysis. After about 10-15 mins you can see the result in "Behavioural information"
• anubis.iseclab.org is another place you may submit binary to see it behavior before executing it locally. Here you got report and pcap file of network activity, if any.

As a result - you may get basic idea of what a binary does and how to analyse it. But - please note, that sophisticated malware checks its environment for sandbox traces and VM presence. So there is a chance that the seemingly "harmless binary" turns out to be sophisticated malware under real conditions.