Kali Linux For Linux

Hacking has always been a cool thing in popular culture, and even though various movies and shows have tried to portray a genuine hacking-based narrative, not many do a better job than Mr. Robot.

The show's main character is Elliot Alderson, a brilliant young cyber-security engineer and vigilante hacker that gets mixed up in some seriously f-ed up business.

Elliot's distribution of choice is, of course, Kali Linux.

What exactly is Kali Linux? It's one of the few "hacking-focused" Linux distros. To be more precise, it's "the most advanced Penetration Testing Distribution," geared towards computer security and network experts.

Formerly known as BlackTrack Linux, Kali Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution that contains several hundred tools (around 600 penetration test tools alone) built specifically for penetration testing, security research, computer forensics, and reverse engineering.

The OS' motto is "The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear." But, what does that mean? Kali Linux is designed to be quiet, in the sense that it goes to great lengths to hide its presence on networks, as well as to be protected against various types of attacks.

That's exactly why, even though it's based on Debian, they are very different, with Kali having many common services disabled by default. For example, the network services are disabled by default. This makes the distro very secure by default, but it also makes it not exactly welcoming to users who don't know what they are doing.

It would be simple to call Kali Linux just a Debian-based Linux distro with some specialized tools sprinkled on top, but the truth is that Kali Linux is more than just the sum of its parts.

Let's start off with the desktop environment. Historically a big user of GNOME, nowadays Kali allows its users to choose between three popular desktop environments: Xfce, GNOME, and KDE Plasma.

You can't talk about Kali and not mention its immense set of tools. While BackTrack used to have a large number of outdated penetration tools, Kali boasts over 600 penetration testing tools (some GUI and some CLI apps) (i.e. Maltega, Hydra, Nmap, Responder, sqlmap, Wireshark, Burp Suite, John the Ripper, and Metasploit Framework being the most famous).

Another great aspect of Kali is that it's FHS compliant. This means that it adheres to the FIlesystem Hierarchy Standard, allowing you to easily locate binaries, libraries, and other types of files.

Kali wouldn't be a top-tier penetration distribution without a custom kernel that has the latest injection patches included.  Speaking of the kernel, Kali provides you with the option to even tweak it according to your needs.

One of the biggest annoyances with Linux distribution is their lack of support for wireless interfaces. Kali Linux is designed to eliminate this problem (at least partially). Kali comes with support for many wireless devices, making it compatible with numerous USB and wireless hardware.

Maintaining the integrity of an OS in this day and age seems like an uphill battle. That's why Kali Linux uses a minimal and trusted set of repositories. This is yet another aspect that makes Kali Linux probably not the best day-to-day Linux distro out there, as adding repos to your sources.list could very well undo most things Kali stands for.

Kali Linux is available for a wide range of both 32 and 64-bit architectures. The fact that Kali offers full customization of its ISOs is also quite remarkable. You can create specific Kali versions, thanks to its endless flexibility.

What's even more impressive is the fact that it also boasts remarkable ARM support.

Kali can be installed on Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, Odroid, and many other single-board systems.

Considering the nature of Kali Linux, and the professionalism of the small team behind it, it's no wonder that the Documentation section is not only hefty and comprehensive but also very well organized and written.

Even though Kali Linux can be used by both professional computer security and penetration testing experts and hacking hobbyists, it's vastly geared more towards the former.

That said, users unfamiliar with Linux or those simply looking for a day-to-day Linux distro for whatever purpose other than security audits and penetration testing, are better off with one of the many good Linux distributions out there such as Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc.

Even though Kali Linux's architecture is customizable, even adding random packages and repositories to it may result in a broken system. There's no support for apt-add-repositories, and no LaunchPad, or PAAs either. To quote the developers on this one: "Trying to install Steam on your Kali Linux desktop is an experiment that will not end well."

That said, if penetration testing is something you're passionate about, or your job depends on doing it well, then Kali Linux is probably your best bet.