Hi erick,
Not sure I should be advising a PhD guy, but Docker on Linux is definitely cutting edge right now, with projects such as CoreOS , Project Atomic and Panamax
If you want to have a play with Docker without altering your computing environment, Digital Ocean have a $5 @ month plan, where you can fire up Linux/Docker with one click. If you do a search on twitter you can find $10 vouchers for Digital Ocean which is effectively 2 months free access.
David made available the current release of the Maidsafe test network in a Docker image and it’s dead easy to install and hopefully they will continue to offer the test environments in Docker friendly format.
I plan to run the vault software in a docker container when it goes Beta 
Good luck with the OSX testing, great that your offering your down time to help out.