Is there a 'vanilla' Kali Linux?

This might be a strange question since kali is normally used as a security tool and I have used it for work for some time. However, I wondered whether there was a 'plain' version of Kali without all of the security tools for basic home use?

The reason I ask is that everything in Kali 'just works', which I cannot say of other Linux distros. I don't like what Ubuntu did with its Unity interface and moved away from it a long time ago, and Linux MINT has fundamental issues on my computer (network, SSD support, NTFS support among others) whereas Kali works seamlessly. In Kali I also like the sidebar (LXDE panel I think?) as well as the Android-like app launcher (anyone know what its called?). I guess I could just uninstall the bits I don't want one by one, but I wondered whether there was a plain Kali distro?

The way Kali is built doesn't make it suitable for basic home use, in my opinion & experience. As you know, running everything as root is bad.

To get what you need, it sounds like you might need to roll your own custom ISO. Check out docs.kali.org for some directions.

I take your point about the root level access. Convenient for penetration testing but not a good idea for general home use. However, I think I have found what I was looking for. I saw a screen shot of Debian with the same dock as Kali on distrowatch so I downloaded Debian 9 and opted to install LXDE but it didn't look like the screenshot. After a bit of research, I eventually discovered that the Kali desktop, including the dock, is a basic Gnome 3 environment. I have always mistakenly believed that it was LXDE. So I installed Gnome et voilla!

Regarding the root account, Debian installation offers to create a root account with or without password. If without password is selected then it works like Ubuntu/Mint where you have to do sudo command. I opted to create separate root and user accounts (both with passwords) and added my user to the sudoers group. Networking and NTFS drive access seem to work just fine as it does in Kali although I do still get some errors regarding my SSD drive on boot-up, although not nearly as much as with MINT. I have already raised this issue on the MINT forum and will probably also do so on the Debian forum. I spent quite a lot of time last night playing with various customizations and also discovered Cairo Dock. It shows a large black margin on the screen under LXDE, but works very nicely with Gnome 3. I have yet to decide which dock to use, but that's the nice thing with Linux - you can pick and choose. The only issue I now have is with printing. No problem with the Laserjet 1010, but can't get the Dell C1760nw working due to lack of driver. Ironically, it worked OK under MINT, but again a seperate issue to be raised on the Debian forum.

Glad you got it working.

Yeah, while root is required for most info security work, definitely not something for everyday use.