I installed Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on my sister’s “old” laptop. It’s actually better than my work laptop but she replaced it because it got slow. IOW it got a virus.
I managed to install the VPN client and was able to use RDesktop to tunnel into my Windows machine at work.
Cinn and Mate hate another problem I didn’t mention... the logging ( HDD read/write rate) is terrible... that is why I changed to KDE in the first place.. :p
I love KDE, and would go no other way since... but you mentioned Virus... not the OS’s fault..