Its definately harder than windows - but I have managed to get ColdFusion 7.02 Server running on Apache, on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

My previous experience with Linux is very limited to say the least - and most of the issues I ran into were due to misunderstandings on my part about how linux works...

Main issues i ran into:

• Ubuntu does not have a root account (not strictly true - but when I though it was asking me for a root password - it was actually asking for my password...)
• Could not execute ColdFusion installer after I had downloaded it (not marked as executeable - chmod +x)
• I really don't understand linux permissions - I want to be able to create and edit docs in /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ without having to sudo (I'm sure this one will seem more logical when its not 3am!
• Had an issue with the connector for apache - the one that is distributed with CF is not compatible with Apache 2.2 (there is a hotfix downloadable from adobe for this, which worked)

All in all, I don't think 4 hours was too bad, baring in mind my inexperience with linux etc.

I have to say, I'm very impressed with VMware player - about 100 billion times faster than MS Virtual PC!

A big thankyou goes to Dave Shuck for his excellent post on Installing CFMX7 & Apache2.2.2 on Ubuntu - Without this I think I would have been totally lost...

I'll post more when its not 3am - and I've had more chance to get everything setup how I want.

(Basically I'm trying to create an environment that I can dev in (and potentially move to other machines) when I'm not using my primary development machine - I have a lightweight laptop that I normally use when I'm not in the office - but I often want to quickly play with something in CF. I didn't want to break my existing windows installation on this machine by installing a load of server / development software - so I thought I'd build a virtual machine - using ubuntu rather than windows to avoid licensing (and hopefully performance) issues!)