How to setup a development server on Linux?
It should work with no or limited changes. However, some modules include fully qualified paths in database tables or variables, so it is worth checking. 

Some areas to look at are:


settings.php, particularly the database array, $cookie_domain, and $base_url
The sites directory: are you using the default directory or one tied to your development environment? If your material is in sites/my.dev.com then you'll have my.dev.com in the files table
URL related modules like securepages, xmlsitemap, and so on


When I am moving from dev to production, I also use drush to double-check that I missed nothing. Running drush vget dumps the content of the variables table, so I can grep that for URLs. For example to see all the variables that have www.indiemade.com hardcoded:

$ drush vget | grep indiemade
securepages_basepath: 'http://www.indiemade.com'
securepages_basepath_ssl: 'https://www.indiemade.com'
seotools_base_url: 'https://www.indiemade.com'
xmlsitemap_base_url: 'http://www.indiemade.com'
...


One other tool you might want to look into is drush migrate, well explained here.