Will my system remain safe, if i run ubuntu (through VMware) on windows - for virus purposes?

Question

i want to use both windows & ubuntu, but i mostly work in windows & that i use ubuntu only for virus purposes(virus-free). By doing as mentioned above, will it be effective in removing the virus & that i don't want the virus to effect my windows files when i am running ubuntu from windows. Will it work in the similar manner as that in the case of booting seprately ubuntu from restart.

Answer 1

I can not think of any reason why it wouldn't. Assuming that you can open VMware.

Answer 2

Using Ubuntu through virtualisation software such as Virtualbox or VMware should provide reasonable protection to the host from any malware in the guest system provided you have are not sharing resources such as folders between the two systems.

VMware, Virtualbox and similar products are an effective jail for the guest system so if the guest system becomes infected it's unlikely to be able to infect the host.

There is a theoretical risk but any malware would need to know that it was running on VMWare which was running on a Windows host. I am not aware of any real world examples of such a threat however.

If your host operating system: Windows gets infected however this does not protect the guest OS Ubuntu. Any malware in your Windows host is just as capable of trashing your Ubuntu guest as it is of trashing any other part of Windows.

If you are running Windows make sure it adequate protection whether host or guest OS.

There is a downside to virtualisation software however. It will be slower than it would be if installed directly on the hardware but depending on what programs you use this may not matter to you.

Answer 3

I'm running Ubuntu on VMWare as we speak. It works, but performance isn't near what it could be. I have a 3rd Gen Intel i3 with 8gb of RAM too.. It's a decent machine.

I'm also running Win8.

My setup won't allow me to dual boot without wiping my system and formatting my SSD.

But for viruses, I use Sophos for Windows, and don't need one for my Linux distros.