On 10/18/2015 7:39 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Run whateverOS in a VM under whateverOTHERos.
| But, aren't you trading one "walled garden" for another
| in the process? How much are you willing to pay
| (in lack of convenience) for that?

I'm not. As far as I'm concerned, VMs are for the
birds, except maybe for fulltime software testing.

VM's are an excellent way of supporting multiple machine
configurations without trying to cram everything into a
single physical machine. In hindsight, I wish I had
implemented each of my workstations as a *set* of VM's
instead of trying to get several dozen large apps to
"play well" together.

I also use VM's to support legacy OS's without having to
worry about finding a "vintage" driver that will work on
*modern* hardware.

| E.g., none of my machines talks to the outside world
| (save this one)....
| We do our banking and online purchases on an "immutable" laptop;

That sounds like a well planned solution, but
it wouldn't work for me. Too much hassle. Most

Very little hassle. If you want to save something, you
save it to a thumb drive (we save copies of statements
to a thumb drive as a matter of course -- so they are
available even if a computer crashes OR we have to leave
the house in an emergency -- and can't bother grabbing
a computer to drag along our financial records!).
Or, you set up a "persistent" portion of the disk
(e.g., a "D:") that you can use for that purpose.

The point is, no "software" (or settings governing its
operation) ever gets changed on the machine.

In the future, I'll install Flash on that machine for
those few times SWMBO "needs" to view some Flash
presentation (yet don't want to risk supercookies)

things I do involve going online. Even if I'm editing
a photo or writing software, it's not unusual to
want to look something up. I don't want multiple
machines any more than I want VMs.

I simply could not operate with fewer machines -- let
alone the redundancy issue. I have far too many (big)
apps that would be tedious to get -- and KEEP -- to
play together well. And, too much risked "repair time"
when/if something got munged.

And, no way I want to multiboot Solaris, FreeBSD/NetBSD
and Windows and *hope* the machine stays in a consistent
state.

With banking, I just don't do it online. I take
the approach of operating safely when online
and avoiding banking, shopping, etc. Those things
simply can't be made safe. Even with a read-only
laptop you still risk things like man-in-the-middle
attacks in your connection to the bank.

Then you limit yourself to the range of banks (and other
institutions) with which you can operate. And, your choices
will diminish, over time.

[I've had to close several accounts in recent years when they
changed the terms to effectively push me to access my statements,
etc. "on line"]

"Operating safely" is almost impossible. Too many drive-by
attacks -- even on big "well known" sites. Hence the approach
of getting the machine into a known, safe state and ensuring that
it can't be changed from that state.