Questions For Kali as main OS.

[Karmic]

I've used Ubuntu and Fedora for a few years now and have a good/decent grasp on linux. I am a student who studies security a lot and is looking to get into to pen testing eventually so I decided to run Kali linux as my main OS. This is to get a feel for all the tools in Kali as well as get some troubleshooting experience fixing various issues.

I have set it up with my graphics card, no root logon (only can sudo into root), and various other mods to make it usable and slightly more secure. I have it in a position that I like and it's running quite well on my system. However I do have some questions about what I am doing.

1. Is this even a good idea? Could I easily get owned even with my firewall rules and settings all optimized?

2. Is there any issue I should be aware of that will likely sway my decision?

3. If this is a terrible idea, what distro's should I look into (Like Slackware, Arch, FreeBSD) if my main interest is security?

[nemon1c]

The chances of you using even a quarter of the tools Kali supplies is honestly slim to none. Kali is just an OS which has access to many tools, but many of them aren't going to be practical for your use. All the tools provided in Kali can be installed on any distro, so I'd recommend using Kali as a VM and learning which tools you're prone to utilize more frequently. A good way to grasp which tools you'd be using is by downloading some vulnerable images (boot2roots) from sites like vulnhub.com, running them as vm's, and testing different tools against it. The site includes walkthroughs if you get stuck as well, but you'll get some idea for which tools to utilize in certain situations. As for which distro's you should be looking into, that's a debate that's been held on this forum frequently, so a quick search should help you with that answer.

[Syntax990]

Kali as a main OS can work, but it's not ideal.

My personal experience with Kali Linux is it's just an outdated Debian (ironic?). I have always had sound issues on most of the hardware I have used. After a week of using it, plugging and unplugging headphones the sound would sometimes just cut out. I had to reboot or restart kmix just to get the sound working. It was repetitive and boring.

(Most) All of the programs on Kali are available for Debian. You'd be better off installing Debian if you are that interested, then install each tool you need.

Kali was optimized to attack, not defend. God knows what kind of holes it has lurking around.

For straight up auditing, it's great. However it sounds like you use your computer for much more so Kali will only hold you back.

[Karmic]

Thanks for the sound advice. I've been doing a bit of research and I think I'm going to take the advice and switch to Debian and just have a custom Kali VM.

I'd like to run Slackware at some point, but school is my greatest impediment to knowledge so that will have to wait.

[TheWormKill]

I'd suggest using a solid distro that is very customizable, like Slackware, Gentoo or Arch, maybe some BSD, so it fits your needs as a system and provides good security. Then you can compile the tools needed and work from there. Avoid systemd.

[Teapot]

One thing you have to remember is that *nix is only as secure as what you put into it.
The power of it is not that it is impenetrable but that it is open source and thus
it can be patched up and worked on by the community and by yourself individually.

Security is 100% up to you.

[iTpHo3NiX]

Kali isn't meant to be ran as a daily driver OS. Not that it can't, it's just not practical. I'd focus more as linking Kali as a pentesting tool rather than an OS. If you find yourself needing to make changes to Kali after everyboot make it persistent or build a custom image for what you like as a pentester. I usually boot Kali up for wireless pentesting, MiTM, and SEToolkit. I could easily set this up in a debian build, but for me, just plugging in a USB and going from there is nice and easy.

Daily driver nix would be, debian, fedora, BSD, arch and the like.

Just my $0.02

[v32itas]

Kali as a main OS can work, but it's not ideal.

My personal experience with Kali Linux is it's just an outdated Debian (ironic?). I have always had sound issues on most of the hardware I have used. After a week of using it, plugging and unplugging headphones the sound would sometimes just cut out. I had to reboot or restart kmix just to get the sound working. It was repetitive and boring.

(Most) All of the programs on Kali are available for Debian. You'd be better off installing Debian if you are that interested, then install each tool you need.

Kali was optimized to attack, not defend. God knows what kind of holes it has lurking around.

For straight up auditing, it's great. However it sounds like you use your computer for much more so Kali will only hold you back.

omg I taught I'm the only one with sound problems using kali... The thing is I had no problems with backtrack, but in kali 99^% of the time everything I play is full of noise... When i started using slackware there was a 'no sound' problem and I learned something about sound. So alsa was trying to play sound trough hdmi port by default. After little bit of configuration my laptop sings again.

And to OP seriously I cant talk anything about arch and gentoo, because i havent used them. But slackware is awsome it forces you to learn stuff instead of blind copypasting comands in to terminal.