8 ms·

Kali is a pretty poor distro. Merely a fork of debian for no other purpose than to create clickable icons/menu items for cli applications that require sudo. So

Kali is a pretty poor distro. Merely a fork of debian for no other purpose than to create clickable icons/menu items for cli applications that require sudo. So 99% of the security apps they install are presented in an unusable form. Nothing you can't do with debian and a few runs of apt-get.

tacone 11y ago
They ship customized kernel and drivers for obvious reasons. That's the real deal.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  What does their "customized kernel" do? (Besides having a few wifi drivers built in)
  - tacone 11y ago
    AFAIK just that.
- phuckkali 11y ago
  The point is that none of the menu items are worth anything as they spawn an xterm, which emits an error about requiring sudo, then exits. Having a metric ton list of installed tools that are displayed and are not usable seems pretty daft.
RandomBK 11y ago
It's been a while since I used Kali so this might have changed, but the distro provides pentest-focused default configs and patchsets that can be a pain to set up yourself. Configuring your own systems can also leave behind revealing information that will allow others to trace your activities. Kali is designed to allow you to quickly set up throwaway systems for particular projects. It's far from perfect, but represents a better starting point than a general-purpose distro.
antsar 11y ago
Doesn't Kali default to having you login as "root", for pretty much this exact reason?
- phuckkali 11y ago
  So run everything else as root. Real secure. "Make everything setuid 0!"
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    Running as root in a lot of ways is to further nail home that this is a tool that is not for your day to day computer usage. You'll pull it out for testing, use it, and then toss the environment. With the environment as disposable as it is, running as a regular user gains you nothing, except a potential case of carpal tunnel from typing sudo over and over again.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      Kali is much less of a live CD than backtrack was. Also, most of the people Kali is targeted towards would use it every day.
    - phuckkali 11y ago
      wireshark as root? Honestly? I've got thousands of lines in there, and I'd not trust it. And this is no longer a "live cd" as you claim it as. Installation is installation. You'll use it for more than a one time usage btw.
- phuckkali 11y ago
  Actually that does not fix the issue with cli tools having links that expand to a rapidly closing xterm.

tacone 11y ago

They ship customized kernel and drivers for obvious reasons. That's the real deal.

ryanlol 11y ago
What does their "customized kernel" do? (Besides having a few wifi drivers built in)
- tacone 11y ago
  AFAIK just that.
phuckkali 11y ago
The point is that none of the menu items are worth anything as they spawn an xterm, which emits an error about requiring sudo, then exits. Having a metric ton list of installed tools that are displayed and are not usable seems pretty daft.

RandomBK 11y ago

It's been a while since I used Kali so this might have changed, but the distro provides pentest-focused default configs and patchsets that can be a pain to set up yourself. Configuring your own systems can also leave behind revealing information that will allow others to trace your activities. Kali is designed to allow you to quickly set up throwaway systems for particular projects. It's far from perfect, but represents a better starting point than a general-purpose distro.

antsar 11y ago

Doesn't Kali default to having you login as "root", for pretty much this exact reason?

phuckkali 11y ago
So run everything else as root. Real secure. "Make everything setuid 0!"
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  Running as root in a lot of ways is to further nail home that this is a tool that is not for your day to day computer usage. You'll pull it out for testing, use it, and then toss the environment. With the environment as disposable as it is, running as a regular user gains you nothing, except a potential case of carpal tunnel from typing sudo over and over again.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    Kali is much less of a live CD than backtrack was. Also, most of the people Kali is targeted towards would use it every day.
  - phuckkali 11y ago
    wireshark as root? Honestly? I've got thousands of lines in there, and I'd not trust it. And this is no longer a "live cd" as you claim it as. Installation is installation. You'll use it for more than a one time usage btw.
phuckkali 11y ago
Actually that does not fix the issue with cli tools having links that expand to a rapidly closing xterm.