Question: I am a newbie in the software development field. I am hungry for more avenues through which I can develop, nurture, and mature in my development, scripting, and programming skills, more so outside of work time. I'd like to know what type of set-up (hardware and/or software) would be extremely beneficial or that others have found necessary for this endeavor. 

I want to be able to equip my home 'office' with tools that will enable me to progress and grow as a developer.

Answer: 
Personally, I would recommend starting with Linux - just about every programming language has good free tools on Linux. Then I would use VMWare to make virtual machines with various other platforms you might want to test your software on - Windows, other Linux distros, maybe OpenSolaris, etc. Again, in my experience Linux with a Windows VM works better than Windows with a Linux VM.
I recommend KATE (part of KDE) as an editor. It's a lightweight and easy editor with syntax highlighting, multiple files, and a built-in terminal. It's not imposing like emacs or vim, and it is great for all sorts of projects, because of the terminal. It's sort of like a mini-IDE.