Hi all,
I was testing the last Kali Linux 2019.1 ARM images to install a new fully working pentesting distro for my Raspberry Pi 3 B+ board with a Quimat 3.5" LCD touch screen.
My first doubt was which image to download, since there is a Raspberry Pi image, Raspberry Pi 2-3 image with the nexmon wireless driver and a 64bit image:
1. Kali Linux RPi (I think for legacy Raspberry Pi)
2. Kali Linux RaspberryPi 3 64 bit (64 bit arm64 architecture built version also with nexmon driver)
3. Kali Linux RaspberryPi 2 and 3 (Nexmon driver compiled version)
It will be good to explain that nexmon is the name of the Broadcom internal WiFi driver with monitor mode capabilities. So It will be good to use it.
Specific images for Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W (to be tested)
* Kali Linux RPi0w Nexmon
* Kali Linux P4wnP1 Aloa
So after identifying the different versions it was time to decide between the option 2 and option 3. The difference is between 32bit and 64bit architecture, or in other words, between architecture armhf and arm64. I had to google a lot to learn if it makes any difference in performance meanings. After reading about 5 different articles I decided to test it myself. So I downloaded and burned both versions in two microSD cards. I booted, updated and upgraded both. I played with both, installed, compiled and executed different tools. Everything was going alright with both versions, since performance was quite the same between both with this hardware.
But after some hours, I needed firefox or any other good internet browser. And ...
Firefox doesn't work on 64bit ARM version. Of course Chrome was not a solution for a hacker. I tried many possible solutions, but none worked, except adding armhf (ARM 32bit architecture) to the Kali Linux 64bit. You can allways do this just by executing (dpkg --add-architecture armhf ; apt update ; apt upgrade). I have done it many times in the past with my debian based laptop (amd64 and i386). Since this isn't a good solution for such a small embedded board as raspberry pi, because it will install and duplicate many packages and libraries, creating a very heavy Operating system.
Finally the decision was to keep the armhf or 32bit version for the moment (option 3). I hope this post helps you to decide about the Kali Linux version to choose. Also the LCD screen kernel driver worked as expected.
