Kali Linux Gnome Desktop

 

 

 

I am always looking for interesting new developments in security analysis and penetration testing, and have been attending SANS Security conferences for a few years now, which has introduced me to several Linux distributions that I was not otherwise familiar with.
Initially the most popular was Knoppix, then focus moved to BackTrack Linux, and finally last year when it seemed that BackTrack might disappear,  Kali Linux picked up the torch.
Although I have always installed whatever Linux they were using in the class on my laptop, I never seemed to keep it for very long afterward. Something always came up - either they weren't flexible enough, or updates were too difficult, or they were just based on a Linux distribution which was too old to begin with.
I have also tried to put some of the tools we used in the classes on other Linux distributions, and while that sometimes worked I all too often found that the tools were difficult to install/configure/update, and they generally didn't last either.
So, when I read the Kali 1.0.6 release announcement, there were two things in it which really caught my eye.  First, it is now based on Debian 7 (Wheezy), and second, the Kali developers have made standard packages of all the tools included in it. I decided it was time to give it a closer look, in pretty much the same way that I look at any other Linux distribution, rather than waiting until I got to the conference this year.