Bootable USB for security?

[Guysakar]

Hello guys and gals.

After having some accounts compromised, I am trying to figure out a safer way to do banking online. My idea is to have a separate operating system which is used solely for sensitive computing.

I have an XPS 13 with Windows 7 Home Premium with a 128 G SSD, so space is a bit of a concern.

My idea was to make a Windows 7 bootable USB, but it is appearing very difficult - and someone said it takes about 20 minutes to boot. That's too long.

So now I am thinking of maybe Linux or Ubunutu or something. Does this sound like the best course of action to accomplish my goal of having a virus free OS that is used only for logging into my online banks?

Also, could I install Linux or Ubunutu on my actual hard drive and just choose to boot from that vs. my standard Windows 7? Would I have to completely reformat and partition the HDD to accomplish this? Also, if I did it this way, and I had a virus on my Windows 7, would that leak over to the Linux or Ubunutu when running from there?

Side not, I have never used either Linux or Ubunutu, so any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

PS How long does it usually take to boot Ubunutu from a UDB?

 

[HP_on_Linux]

Windows 7 totally shafted us dualbooters, I have plenty of computers dual booting windows older os and a linux flavor, you can download virtualbox and put Linux Mint or Ubuntu in it but it would be slow. How computer savvy are you, could you install a second small harddrive for linux and run dual boot. The few people who have managed dual booting win7 and linux ubuntu 12.04 done so either painsteakingly or luckily, and not sure about Mint 13 i tried a disc and it wanted to install and wipe out win7 no option to install beside win7