To what extent can an older OS be used safely under certain conditions?
by bcsm from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5RCZB)
Hi, firstly apologies as you're probably sick of seeing posts like this, I know there is plenty of material about how unsafe older OS are to use in the modern day, but these mostly relate to someone wanting to use e.g Windows XP as a daily driver, for web browsing etc etc.
Recently I have had to use certain Windows-only software for university, and while I could probably just use Windows computers available on campus, I would rather be able to use it on my laptop. I could just use Windows 10, and perhaps possibly will, but not only do I not really like Win10, I find older OS & OS history very interesting, and find the fact that security issues prevent their usage nowadays very irritating. For instance, I had an old notebook which worked perfectly with Ubuntu 12, and still does, but on attempting to use modern OS on it, major functionality like network connection stopped working.
So I'd like to use Windows 7, *purely* for running software. I would not connect it to the internet, or use any internet functionality e.g IE.
I know there is functionality available to have a shared directory between a VM and the host OS, so I was intending to use this to transfer software to the VM, downloaded on the host linux OS. However, I feel like this could be a vulnerable spot? Probably not practically, but hypothetically.
tl;dr: Can I safely use a windows 7 VM to run windows-only software, downloaded on my own machine and transferred over, as long as I don't *ever* connect it to the internet?
Thank you for your time.
Recently I have had to use certain Windows-only software for university, and while I could probably just use Windows computers available on campus, I would rather be able to use it on my laptop. I could just use Windows 10, and perhaps possibly will, but not only do I not really like Win10, I find older OS & OS history very interesting, and find the fact that security issues prevent their usage nowadays very irritating. For instance, I had an old notebook which worked perfectly with Ubuntu 12, and still does, but on attempting to use modern OS on it, major functionality like network connection stopped working.
So I'd like to use Windows 7, *purely* for running software. I would not connect it to the internet, or use any internet functionality e.g IE.
I know there is functionality available to have a shared directory between a VM and the host OS, so I was intending to use this to transfer software to the VM, downloaded on the host linux OS. However, I feel like this could be a vulnerable spot? Probably not practically, but hypothetically.
tl;dr: Can I safely use a windows 7 VM to run windows-only software, downloaded on my own machine and transferred over, as long as I don't *ever* connect it to the internet?
Thank you for your time.