My plan on a new laptop is to create a host windows 7 system and isolate a drive to install a virtual box containing a linux system on it. My concerns are 

(1) would the linux system perform nearly identically as a freshly install linux as far as its functionality is concerned? How about their running speed?

(2) Would the linux in a virtual box access windows partition equally well as in the case of dual booting partition? Let's both linux and windows use fat32 file system. I plan to access 

(3) which linux system you might suggest to be installed in the virtual box?