Mark Dain
I have a crazy idea. Could you run a light OS that has just enough to run a VM which is your actual OS; You use the guest for everything. - The guest needs no special drivers; hardware like Wi-Fi is abstracted away to Ethernet. - You have a "hardware" firewall that malware can't disable; NAT in the VM and/or iptables on host. - You can encrypt the VM's disk if you want/need to. - The host has no services & almost no programs so virtually all infections should be contained to a VM you can roll back to a healthy snapshot. - The host almost never needs to be updated; you can't break your computer in a way you can't recover from.
😀 Tom
Just a basic set-up: Boot up to an encrypted Mint install which connects to a VPN. Have VirtualBox with other VMs for different purposes. For example, I'm typing this in one that I just use for Gmail, FB, and Sublevel. I have another one for general web browsing where I won't log into any services. I have one that runs Win for when I have to use Office or Adobe software. I have one with no virtual hdd; just a live cd that I can spin up (not foolproof - host machine could see it, and SWAP). Shared folders and clipboard, and it can be run in full-screen for a seamless experience. I'll probably make an encrypted one for finances.