Hey, anons. As someone who had a taste of the superiority of Linux via dual-booting Mint with Windows, but then had to get rid of said dual-boot some months later due to various extenuating factors including certain Windows functions breaking entirely, such as Disk Manager , I was wondering something: If I were to run Mint, Kubuntu, or whatever through a VM, would it still be more secure than Windows?
I've never used machine virtualization before, at least not like this, so I don't know anything about how privacy, security, etc. would be effected. The thing is, I can't switch to Linux full-time, as I need certain, resource-heavy software that has no Linux equivalent. Not only that, but in my experience, most distros' wi-fi support is touch-and-go without drivers that first have to be downloaded, and I have no ability to use ethernet atm. ThinkPenguin adapters don't seem to work, either. (Speaking of which, does the guest OS still require the same wireless drivers, or does it rely on the main OS for its network connections? If it's the former, then how would you even manage to set it up without offline installations and sacrificing the blood of 13 virgins under the light of the full moon?)
Since I still would have Windows as my main OS, I'd be using it for the aforementioned software, vidya, and so forth; but I'd like to be able to use Linux for web browsing and other security-intensive things, if possible. Is this viable through a virtualized configuration? And if so, which VM is the best for this sort of thing? I should also note that I'm interested in VMs due to inevitably needing them for my chosen profession, so I might as well learn them now.
And how would file backups work? I assume it's still possible to copy files and documents onto external media, but that depends on how sandboxed the guest OS is from the main OS, doesn't it?