Recommendation for Virtual Machine and Instructions to set it up?

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

Background:

I'm involved with having some software written and then testing it.

The software won't run on either my Wheezy or Jessie systems -- it appears to 
be an outdated libstdc++ that is the problem.

We've tried a few different solutions, including trying to install updated 
libstdc++ library using dpkg -i and having the package compiled statically 
(although, for some reason, the programmer couldn't get it completed static, 
it apparently still needs some share libraries).

Getting to the question:

I suppose I could as some more questions related to that, but, for now, the 
next suggestion (aside from upgrading one of my machines to stretch (or 
whatever the current stable is) is to do something like create a virtual 
machine and install Ubuntu on it (because the programmer also uses Ubuntu and 
it works there for him) -- I suppose I might also (eventually) try stretch on 
the VM.

I think I'd install the VM on my Jessie machine, as there is less data at risk 
there (and, of course, I need to backup that data before proceeding), but the 
question is:

Question:

What would you recommend for the software to run a VM under Jessie (that would 
probably run Ubuntu), and can you recommend a fairly simple set of 
instructions to first set up the VM, and then at least begin the install 
process to that VM.

Thanks!