I have run virtualbox and vmware both on various ubuntu based ditros.
vmware-player so far on straight ubuntu vmware-player is winning. In
playing with virtualbox and usb devices (blackberry) I lost my usb
functionality and from playing too much I reloaded and restored
(sbackup give you ability to play). Under either you can run any OS
under the sun. Here is the link, its for gusty but works in hardy.
Just change the .tar name in the extract command to match what was
downloaded. It works fine.