Seeing we're all doing Git and other platforms and open-source work that usually started out from a Linux environment, it may be wise if you could try deploying it from a familiar environment as well, since most guides would always point to either a Linux installation or a Mac OSX installation. Another reason is because we're all drenched in using a bash terminal anyway, and UNIX systems have those by default.
Either way, as much as I do like Windows, you'll notice that it's all unstable or difficult to perform from Windows. If you do prefer working in Windows though, well, I'm sure there are guides out there that can help.
Finally, I'm doing this because I'm using a Linux environment anyway, and I do find it easier to set up all what we have to do in VERTSOL, despite the terminal mess.
Linux is an open-source operating system. Like most open-source projects, it's notable for its collaborative community development (anyone can contribute freely) and the fact that it's free. Linux has many derivatives out there (called distros or distributions, think "forks") because of that, and they all work similarly.
There are many ways to set up Linux. You can install it on your hard drive like you did on Windows, you can run a virtual machine that has Linux in it, heck, you can even run it from a flash drive so you can use it anywhere you want (like say, the comlab, hehe.). There are also many Linux distros that you can choose. They all have their flavors and styles on how they work, but I'll just discuss one particular way just to make things simple and consistent.
A virtual machine allows you to install an OS while using your own at the same time. If you've used emulators before, it's like emulating another operating system (in this case, we're going to do Linux)
Here's how a Virtual Machine looks like. I'm using Windows 7, and yet I have Mac OSX on a window. Perhaps I'll teach that someday.
Moving along...
You should have two files after this, the VirtualBox installer, and the Ubuntu image file (an .iso file)
Just grab the Windows version and install it! Should be easy peasy.
By this point, Ubuntu Linux is already set up. You can play with it as much as you want and you won't need to worry about it breaking up (if it did, you can just reinstall, or restore from a backup in VirtualBox).