I'm looking into switching to Linux as my main OS and would like some suggestions from people who know more about them than I do. I'm looking for a distro that has high security features but is still somewhat easy to use. I also would like to still be able to run Windows in some capacity in the event I need to do something Linux will just not do (I anticipate this to be mostly gaming). Ideally I would like to just run Windows in a VM but if I need to dual boot to get things to work right I would be open to that as long as the linux partition can be secured. I'm not a complete noob but I've never had a reason to learn Linux before (windows based PC's at all my previous jobs). Now that I'm jobless I'd like to make the switch for real.
I've used Ubuntu and Mint in the past, should I be sticking with these or is there something that is closer to what I'm looking for described above?
thats the first thing to answer as im guessing you want to setup a VM for gaming, you will need your GPU to do that..
there are some, oddities, with doing it that way. i.e. you will need a seperate video controller for the main OS (linux) and then either multiple monitors (one for each) or a monitor with multiple inputs.
also you need to consider your input devices, are you going to use some kind of KVM switch, or seperate devices?
there are already quite a few guides on this. but probably your best and easiest route is to just dual boot.
as for distro choice, easy to use is a subjective topic. being completely new to linux every distro will need some familiarising....
from a security stand point, the most secure distro's are usually the most up to date, which would be ARCH, opensuse, and the latest version of fedora... opensuse i believe is the more stable of those, and is fairly easy to use..
im no linux master btw so more research on your part is a very good idea.
Get Fedora, it's easy enough to use, there are tricks to make it even easier to use and install some extras on that are very useful, and Fedora is on kernel 4.9.10 now, and will be the first user friendly distro to have kernel 4.10, which means that you have full open source full performance graphics right now, and in a couple of weeks, you won't even have to configure hardware passthrough to have full GPU passthrough in a Windows VM, because that's a standard feature of kernel 4.10 which is coming soon. On AMD systems, IOMMU always works really well and is basically troublefree, especially with AMD graphics cards.
Fedora is your best bet for security and compatibility with your setup. You might find some challenges with software repositories but there should be handy guides around. openSUSE is also a good bet if installing software becomes a trouble. In concern to dual booting it is recommended to have separate drives for each OS (also install the distro after installing windows).
By adding SELinux to any distro you can get a lot of additional security, and it fundamentally isn't that difficult, excellent video for those interested in SELinux, or is struggling with it:
Thanks for the replies so far all! I am leaning towards Fedora atm but may give Arch a try too.
Have any of you ever used TAILS or Whonix? I've heard Tor is not really secure and those two sound like they use the Tor network for anonymity, does anyone have thoughts on Tor being used in distro's for internet connections?
Arch Linux is the distro that is the farthest from secure.
Arch Linux is as secure as you make it, you will have to do everything manually and all the security based features that are present within let's say Fedora or OpenSUSE are NOT enabled in the kernel by default. So if you don't know how to tinker with all that stuff, Arch is the distro you want to stay away from.
Unless it's in a VM and you want to learn how those things work and how you'd configure them. Arch is great for learning imo for that reason, but you gotta be careful and probably not use it for normal everyday usage unless you follow the Wiki in detail on setting up those security features.
You can learn Linux on any distro. Arch just forces you to learn it, otherwise you won't have a working system. I've been using Arch Linux on my personal machines for almost 2 years. You wouldn't use it for a business or enterprise for example cause security is basically non-existent.
SELinux is impossible to configure on this distribution, AppArmor Is your only option. And these security features are not enabled in the kernel by default as I mentioned previously. And if you don't know how to configure a kernel and install required packages to get these working then it will be a hassle, compared to using Fedora which has all this crap configured after installation.
The best security feature is the one between your ears. Beyond that, what do you need, disk encryption, prompt security updates, SELinx, anonymous browsing?
Virtual Box is your friend, or you could always dual boot which would be the better choice for gaming (or both, depending on the situation).
Ubuntu and Mint are OK for someone who is learning, because they both have a huge user base and it is usually quite easy to find someone in the forums to assist with any problems that you might have. If you go the Ubuntu route, I'd suggest the Mate desktop. It's a more traditional desktop that doesn't try to pretend that your PC is a smart phone. I like Mint / Cinnamon, but this desktop has become somewhat bloated and crash prone for me, lately (YMMV), so I've moved on.
All of the kewl kids seem to be running: Ubuntu/Mate, Elementary, MS-16 and Solus/Budgie, among others, so look for some reviews on YouTube to see if any of these interest you. And, just because a distribution is small, that doesn't mean that they do not have a friendly, helpful community.
keep in mind that fedora uses wayland as default, so it may give you some troubles, also I couldn't manage to get my passthrou working in fedora cuz strange unknown reason: when I install drivers, screen doesn't turn on anymore and same setup works flawlessly with arch. also fedora supports omvf (edk2) native i guess you have to dload it from repo and it should work without touching any config. also amd+amd seems pretty much good way to go for passthrou :D