Ask HN: Secure and minimalist linux distros?

Recently somehow my Credit and Debit card information was stolen (maybe I have some malware in my Win8 machine), I'm searching for a secure and minimalist linux distro so I can create a VM to do just online transactions over secure Networks (like home). I found this document http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-distros-paranoid-secure-distros-si/ that talks about LPS, Tails and Surprise!. What do you think?