Dual boot with Zorin os

I am running windows 7 Pro. I do banking on it and I have been getting notices that my operating system is not up to date and recommended to update to a new version that is supported. I was thinking about getting a used laptop and putting Zorin OS on it or maybe dual booting it on my Win 7 machine. I do a lot of reading on different blogs and websites, and am worried about getting a virus or malware. I haven't had a virus sense windows me, what a flop that was. I really don't want to go with windows 11, especially sense 10 was such a flop, everyone I know had problems with 10. I could run it in virtual box, I have LMDE-3 running in virtual box and it is slow. Thanks for any help or opinions.

Donbo said:

I do banking on it and I have been getting notices that my operating system is not up to date and recommended to update to a new version that is supported.

I hate those knee-jerk notices. If you're using a good, reasonably current browser and have a https connection, the underlying OS isn't really going to make any difference. You're actual vulnerability is if the OS -- regardless of whether it's 10, 11 or 7 -- becomes compromised from visiting bad sites, and that can carry over to affect your interaction with more sensitive sites. So the ultimate resolution you choose will depend on what type of internet user you are.

I have no qualms about using Win 7 for my banking. I do not consider it to be any less secure than Win 10/11. Any vulnerabilities that aren't being patched are mostly esoteric, IMHO. (In fact, I trust my Win 7 machine more than my wife's Win 10 machine.) I don't do social media and only use a VM to visit sketchy sites, so any scenario where 7 might be more vulnerable than 10 is a scenario I don't ever expect to find myself in anyway.

The best way, however, would be to setup a VM to isolate your sensitive activities (your banking) from general activities (social media and visiting unfamiliar or sketchy sites). Even a Win 7 VM can be used safely if you're running a sandboxed OS that isn't coming in contact with sketchy sites.

So setup a VM dedicated solely to doing your banking, or alternatively setup a VM dedicated to general internet surfing. Either way is fine as long as the OS under which you're doing your banking is not the one you're exposing to general internet surfing.

If Mint is too slow in a VM, you should be able to find an alternate linux that is less demanding and lighter on system resources. If that's still too much trouble, consider buying an inexpensive Chromebook and using that instead.

As for your immediate problem of banks telling you to upgrade your OS, just use a User Agent Switcher extension. There are plenty of extensions for all the major browsers, and what they do is mask your internet connection to the bank and pretend to be a different browser, browser version, and/or OS. The bank won't know you're using Win 7 if the User Agent Switcher tells the bank you're using Win 10.

There was a discussion somewhere here that said Chase doesn't allow Linux OSs to communicate with their website. So having said that it may be true for other banks as well. If not now but maybe in the future. I wrote about why that idea was BS since Linux would be the LEAST prone OS to be hacked or given malware, and just because a lot of hacking is done using the Linux kernel doesn't mean you pull out a broad sword and ban it out right. ESPECIALLY since their idea of security is already flawed simply by not allowing the use of real two factor authentication (2FA) with Aegis, Authy et al and use email or SMS instead.

The primary method a website uses to know what kind of device you're using is with your useragent (UA). Forge that and no one is the wiser...(well, mostly) Go to your browser's add-on repository and find an add-on that changes the UA. Now use this and keep the versions updated. In this case the Firefox version is 98. And there are two.

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:98.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/98.0

Stay abreast of the current versions from the FTP directory. The b is beta so don't use that. Also, don't use decimal points for the version. SO if there's a version 97.1, you just use 97. Same for 98, etc.Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/

UserAgentString.com - Chrome version 58.0.3029.110 ( <--- Now that's an interesting parsed result from the page header)...


Now this "hack" may or may not work. YMMV.

You should try Zorin in a VM and just see what the bank website does first before you commit to a dual boot. I personally use VMware Workstation Player 15 which is the highest version allowed for Windows 7.

If you go dual boot, I'd use more than one hard drive for that. Partitions can go poof like magician's flash paper and can cause issues. It's why I bought a Kingwin hard drive selector. Amazon.com

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Oh. In the laptop department I'd research a Dell Latitude. It doesn't have to be too new either. Something withen the last 8 or so years will probably due well for Zorin or what ever distro. If you know how, and want to customize the living crap out of your install, go Gentoo.