more noob questions about virtualization
 

first i want to thank Wolfhere for this... "Sounds to me like you have a pretty good machine for a noob. I have been at it since 1982." i may be a :newbie: to programming but i know that a good machine helps a lot to get done what i want too. mostly due to playing World of Warcraft is why i got a lot more than a "normal" computer.

ok enough of that stuff... lol

when having a virtual machine, does it take out the problems associated with that o/s or do the problems remain? what i mean is, if i run a secure linux system (viruses need not apply for hire) and i want to run windows (virus haven), then do i have to keep the fear of such problems or does having a virtualization create a small box to contain those problems and the fear can leave as well? and if someone could tell me if that is why running a virtual machine is better than dual booting?

this is an interesting thing if it does put it in a box like that... maybe that is why they call it vbox or virtualbox or such things like that? (more noobness showing it seems...:D)

It puts it in an entirely seperate area. Think of it like it is a completely seperate physical computer. So your host can get virus's as can your virtual machine but they are as if they were seperate machines. The host should be the more secure OS imho but it theoretically doesn't matter. If your virtual machine gets infected just restore to a clean image/the last snapshot you know was good. Thats the beauty of it. It also lets you test software without risking your host machine.

there's no real difference between running windows on a physical or virtual machine in the security sense - either can catch a virus.

with a VM though, you can easily get rid of viruses by keeping a series of snapshots handy, and rolling back to a clean one once you catch a virus

From what it sounds like you want to do with your box... you'd be better to run Wind0ze as the Physical and your *nix box as the virtual here. WoW runs mega-crappily in a VM (I know, because I've tried it lol).

_Orwell

the OP did not say anything about games in the VM