The more things change the more they stay the same. I was thinking of installing Linux on a virtual machine on a Windows host and using that for all my web surfing and having next to nothing on the Windows PC apart from a firewall and antivirus. Not even a web browser. What do you think? Good idea?

In theory there's nothing wrong with it, and it may work. I'm not sure.

no , why would it be a good idea?:O

Well, it makes sense that games designed to run on Windows tend to work on said OS.
Ten years ago or so I dabbled with various distro's of Linux in the hope it would run certain win98 games that didn't on than current windows, it turned out to be a waste of time.

Valve/Steam are currently working on improving SteamOS to support more games with their upcoming Steamdeck, so maybe then things will really improve.

I wonder, why are you thinking that?
My Linux netbook (Samsung N308) never complained about lack of internet connection despite it being offline 99.9% of the time (I use it for presentations on-the-go).
Also, none of my PCs ever warned me about perils of using closed-source software. Skype? Zoom? No problem! GOG games (all of which are closed-source) -- any day of the week! nVidia drivers? Sure thing! Interesting! So, a mandatory Microsoft account for Windows 11 installation has been removed, yes? Or mandatory updates? Yes. Fondly. It went downhill from there on, and pretty fast. As far as my students' notebooks are concerned (all running Windows 8-10), nothing has changed. :) Death of a Windows installation is a matter of death of its registry caused by multiple edits (mainly by installing/uninstalling software). It has been so, it is so, and it will be so. Forever. It is a design flaw (or "feature"). Yes I had. It is fast if it is "fresh". Software installations/usage trashes Windows, so if it was up to me to manage a Windows install, I'd rather install all the software in one bulk under admin account, make a snapshot and then forget this account exists and start using only "limited user" account from there on. And after it gets trashed, just delete it and create a new one.
Obviously, this trick is insanely hard to pull off for any "average Windows user" (half of whom are using admin accounts daily), so a Windows install invariably gets trashed over time. It is a question of "when", not "if". That's your call. No one forces you. No, you won't. And you know that. Consoles can not be used for productivity or content creation. They are only for "consuming". For anything constructive you have to use a proper PC. Consoles/Tablets/Smartphones just won't cut it.

Well, at this point in my life I'd be fine with a non-Apple and non-Android phone that can just give and take calls/texts. I could care less about apps and other features. I want simplicity, functionality and security.

I've done that before. I certainly wouldn't say it's a bad idea.

then buy grandma phone

You should check out the degoogled phones that Rob Braxman sells.

https://brax.me/prod/host.php?f=_store&h=rob&p=&version=

I'll probably pick one of these up sometime in the next few months.

isnt that just a different os phone?:O

He sells mostly degoogled Android phones, but also some Linux.

i meant it is normal phone just lineageos installed on it
and everyone can make that

That was my plan. Couldn't get the Linux OS (Lubuntu) inside the virtual machine (VirtualBox) to output audio properly. That was when I just gave up (no I'm not a noob I've used VMs before).

Not everyone has the skills to install Linux on a phone. It's not as straight forward as you think.

If you add busybox, it's basically linux. If you can root the phone then that's another matter doing more, but a terminal and busybox will do a lot.

Though depends on what you want to do with it. You'd probably want other applications beyond the bare minimum.