I just tried on a virtual machine running on Oracle's https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
I never tried on linux but surely it works on a machine with at least 4GB of ram. It might be boring setting up the windows vm.
I"m getting the same "strange chars" as in a real machine, on the cmd prompt and in the input/output devices.
Here's a screenshot:
http://lucarda.com.ar/x/w32sch2.jpg
Device names not showing up might scare "New comers".
: )