Hi Morgan,
The course would work good with Cloudera and Hortonworks VM as well. You see the same programs can run on each of them as they are just different flavors of Apache Hadoop. It is just that you would have to follow just a little different steps than in the course. If you have already not setup Cloudera VM, I would highly suggest to stick to Apache Hadoop.
Just incase if you are hoping that the installation of Cloudera is simpler, I can tell you that it is equally complex. I am currently making Apache Hadoop 2.x installation (free for you) which should be really simple and easy. I think it should be out there in couple of days. If you can wait, I would suggest you to wait for it.
I used Eclipse in the course. Setting up that is covered in setting up videos.
Do let me know if I can help you further.
Best,
Nitesh