When I first used backtrack – I loved it. Because I felt it was a platform with which you could never stop learning stuff from. Networks, OS, hardware .. it was limitless in terms of potential for a person who had some elementary knowledge or os, networks etc.

With Kali – I have to admit that gnome kept me away from it... and i kept on fiddling with BTR2. I believe, for anything to be perceived well by a human, be food or technology, all or the maximum number of human senses should be invoked well. Touch, see,smell, hear and taste...except maybe smell & taste, the rest applies to an OS – keyboard responses from terminal, eye candy desktop, the startup tone – action response tones … etc

Since there is no point winging if you are not going to do anything about it... I decide to run my age old favorite fluxbox on kali ..


So, the following are a few actions we will do today
1. Remove grub or mimic its removal
2. Change the default grub wallpaper and boot resolution
3. Change apt-get source list and install a software manager
4. Get rid of GDM
5. Login with the traditional command line interface
6. Start x automatically on login
7. Change screen resolution
8. Setup fluxbox as the default WM on login.


This is what I wanted to get to.

grub_boot_screen.jpg
cli_login_prompt.jpg
desktop_view_small.jpg




1. Setting up your environment

  • Your VM I would recommend has 2 cores and around 1200 RAM alloted to it with 25 GB disk.
  • Network – autodetect
  • Update your source.list to look like the following


Code:
#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 _Kali_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20130327-17:54]/ kali contrib main non-free

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 _Kali_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20130327-17:54]/ kali contrib main non-free

## Security updates

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free

deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free

deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free

deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free
  • Run apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade. This will take a while
  • Install synaptic (apt-get install synaptic)
  • Install software-center if you want (apt-get install software-center)
  • if you dont like the away synaptic looks in your environment (I didnt either) – download and install lxapperance to make changes (apt-get install lxapperance) – to change default fonts – would recommend gnome-tweak-tool
  • Install open-vm-tool by apt-get install open-vm-tools. (forget the vmware tools)
  • Run apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse to fix your mouse movements and reboot
  • Kali Documentation : http://docs.kali.org/general-use/ins...ols-kali-guest




2. Getting Fluxbox into the picture

  • Download fluxbox from http://fluxbox.org/download/
  • extract the tar file and cd into to run and run - ./configure ; make ; make install
  • Reboot and choose fluxbox from for your session in gdm
  • Choose your theme – I choose zimeck-darkblue. You can find a lot more of them from the fluxbox site
  • customize your gnome-terminal to have
  • No tabs
  • font as terminus 10
  • uncheck allow bold text
  • uncheck menubar by default
  • change cursor shape to underline.
  • Colors – Green on black and palette scheme – tango
  • tranparent background to your levels
  • disable scrolbar and enable unlimited scrollback and scroll on output or keystroke
  • save close and restart gnome-terminal.
  • Download the wallpaper you want as set it up using fbsetbg -c wallpaper name




3. Change grub look and feel

  • Download an image you want to setup as grub wallpaper and replace the /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png with it. Remember it needs to be in the png format is what I found.
  • download startupmanager – a gui tool to change grub configuration and rebuilt it apt-get install startupmanager
  • run startupmanager and change the following
  • timeout in seconds to 0
  • display resolution to 1024x768 and colour depth to 24
  • uncheck show boot splash and ensure show text during boot is enabled
  • in the advanced tab change resolution to 1024x768
  • What this will do is not let your choose an option during load and start the system straightaway at a higher resolution and change the default wallpaper.




4. Changing init services and startx

  • download and install the following
  • xinit – apt-get install xinit
  • sysv-rc-conf – apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
  • run sysv-rc-conf to stop gdm during startup (tab to uncheck and 'q' after to exit). What this will not do is remove gdm from startup and drop you on a simple login prompt on the whole screen. Feels very retro and much appealing to me.
  • Post login to make sure fluxbox starts with fluxbox at the right resolution create a .xinitrc file and add the following
  • xrandr -s 1440x900
  • startfluxbox
  • run startx and you will have your flux.
  • If you want fluxbox to startup automatically after you login at the command prompt, create a .bash_login file in your home directory and add startx to it.
  • With .bash_login and .xinitrc in place, after your login startx will be invoked which will invoke fluxbox.




Additional tools I found useful were

  • fbrun (as fbrun -bg black -fg white -title "Enter Command" -w 500 -h 25 in your fluxmenu as “Execute..”)
  • geany as the editor (apt-get install geany)
  • xfe as the file manager (apt-get install xfe)
  • libreoffice (use synaptic)
  • claws mail for your mails
  • a good usb network adapter.
desktop_view_small.jpg