I'm currently attending University and prefer a Linux environment to do much of my work, but all I have is a ThinkPad running Windows 8 Pro. Cygwin is nice, but it leaves me missing things like apt-get. My latest solution is to run an Ubuntu 12.04 VM with Windows 8's Client Hyper-V and use Cygwin for SSH access. I've looked everywhere online trying to set this up, but I haven't found much help. I've done this before using VirtualBox, so I figured this would be possible as well. Could anyone provide advice for setting up this environment?

I'm completely uninitiated to Linux networking, virtual networking, and... pretty much all networking configuration, so this has been quite a challenge for me.

What I've done so far:

1. Created an external virtual switch to my wireless NIC. With this, I could successfully SSH to the VM with the leased IP address. But without a static IP, I would soon get disconnected.
2. Created an internal virtual switch and attempt to "share" my main internet connection. (I was following the description on this page)

Thank you all in advance!