Gather Prerequisites

System Requirements

Running Virtual Machines requires a base system with significant resources.
I Recommend A multi-core processor and at least 4 GB or RAM.

Many Windows PCs ship with virtualization features disabled in the system bios.
You should check your system bios settings before you proceed.

Enable VT-x/AMD-v in your bios

VirtualBox

You will need a tool to manage and run virtual machines. There are many such tools available in the world. You can use any that you wish, however for the purposes of these instructions I will be using VirtualBox. It's free and does what we need it to do.

Download and install VirtualBox
Also download and install the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack.

Download a Linux ISO

You will need to download a Linux distribution image.
Ultimately you should be able to use any distribution you choose however the automation scripts I use will only work on Debian based distributions. Of all the Debian distributions, Linux Mint is my current favorite for building VirtualBox machines. When building this presentation I chose the Cinnamon 64 bit version of Linux Mint.

GitHub

You'll need a place to store and share your work. Github is great for this. Sign up for a free account.
Then spend some time getting to know GitHub. Github Guides.