For me, it has been incredibly difficult to find a properly privacy oriented Linux distro that also has ease of use.

First of all, most distros already offer adequate privacy. It’ll always beat Windows or MacOS—that’s for sure.

Second, ease of use and privacy don’t go hand in hand. The more privacy you want the harder it gets to use. The reason I emphasised privacy is because it’s more anonymity at that point.

What is it you want? If it’s privacy you’re after you can’t go wrong with most distros and using FOSS. If it’s anonimity be prepared to make a ton of sacrifices. Have fun putting your laptop in a Faraday bag, routing all your traffic through Tor, visiting eepsites, disconnecting your webcam and microphone, only wiring money with Monero, and so forth.

My point is, there is no best of both worlds.

He eventually found the executable by Googling for it online and is now part of a botnet.

Windows is shitty—don’t get me wrong. But for all my coursework it’s pretty annoying to do on Linux. Especially Office, and yes I am well aware it’s a MS product and that Linux-support will likely never come. Though the limited online version of Office or LibreOffice don’t quite cut it for me. Besides, running it with Wine or in a VM is too much of a hassle.

So “Switch to Linux!” is not really a solution for some. Let’s hope that’ll change in the future.

With that said, fuck Microsoft! I use NixOS btw.

Yes and no. If the VM has network access you can still royally fuck yourself. Also, it’s possibe your virtualisation software has a vulnerability—that way it may still infect your host machine.

More often than not VMs may protect you, but it’s no guarantee.

Imagine paying to get tapped. Never been fond of all these smart home gadgets, although I do love the features it offers. I’d buy one in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t be so privacy intrusive.