Give one reason why I souldn't use Kali as my daily desktop OS

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Hello Kali community
I have been using Kali since over 4 months, after ditching Windows forever. For some people I argued with, jumping from Windows directly to Kali is a strange, if not a wrong/naive/idiotic, move. While reading comments here and on other places such as YouTube, there are some users that sustain that I should not be using Kali as my daily desktop operating system, rather than using it in a virtual machine or using a dual boot configuration.

Why shouldn’t I use Kali as my daily desktop operating system? Kali is not only for PEN testing or doing hacking stuff, it is also a Debian-based distro, so what is the fuss all about? Why are some people OK if I use Ubuntu or PopOS or any other OS installed on my physical computer but when it comes to Kali, those people advise otherwise?

Note that I am not trying to hide myself, nor I care about people opening jaws when they see the dragon logo and background indicating Kali, and I am neither trying to impress anyone by showing them I am using a PEN-test distro as a daily-OS. I have been working in security-related systems at my work in the Windows land (and still doing so), but in my personal life and personal desktop, I want to remain working and learning in the same field (security) but this time on Kali, so again, why the fuss about having Kali installed physically on my PC and not a VM?

Is it because of:

  1. Drivers? I have all my devices and peripherals working fine, except for a network card that I do not care about. For the rest, all my external devices have been working as expected.
  2. Ease of use? Who cares, I like challenges, and this is a motivation for me and a challenge to learn more.
  3. The UI? I care less about the user interface and the fancy backgrounds and icons any other OS offers. Besides, being a Linux OS like the other Debian-based operating systems, I can install those desktop environments on my Kali. So if fancy is what I want, I’d say I can have almost any desktop-environment installed on my Kali.
  4. Hiding myself? As if by running Windows or any other different OS I cannot do PEN testing or bad stuff. Attracting the attention of users/authorities could be the only valid reason, but I really do not care. Come and sue me if you have any proof against me!

Please give me few valid reasons why I should not use Kali as my daily desktop operating system.

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Reason why people say you should not use it is because they heard this from other people online, and the other people heard from other people and so on, and people tend to repeat what they hear, very few of them have their own opinion based on expertise.

I’d like to know reasons myself too.

Kali as daily driver is IMO good if you’ll be learning pentesting on daily basis.
One reason why I would not use Kali is because it’s rolling-release, you might want a more stable distro.

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Yep, that is what I thought about. Just like the 10-monkey thought experiment (if you know the story)

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Kali is fine as a daily driver. It used to not be due to various factors (like root user by default), but over the years it has shifted to a more traditional linux experience, or the ability to change it to be with tools like kali-tweaks. As long as you are able to handle any unique linux issues that pop up, or have the ability to find information necessary to fix them, then there isn’t anything that should hold you back.

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Good move ! Congratulations ! This way, you will learn quickly how to hack and how to protect !

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The only reason I can think of is, provided pentesting isn’t your bread and butter, is the menu structure, which hides daily productivity app one level down.

But that’s something I fixed for myself by reordering the menus (bringing them back up, creating two new categories (offsec and defsec) into which I moved the top level Kali menu items.

Now you have to look closely, to notice it’s Kali, unless it’s advertised via a wallpaper.

Since that’s a user specific tweak, if I log in as root or kali, it’s still all normal, but when I log in with my personal account I have the experience of any Debian based productivity oriented Linux desktop distribution, just that I have the advantage of a rolling release (which I consider a big plus, not a negative!)

I think there might be some OS settings that might Kali slightly more vulnerable to attack, but in my use case and network setup, they are essentially irrelevant, hence I’ve forgotten what they were, plus they can be changed to standard settings anyway.

Maybe someone remembers…
…might be useful if we could toggle modes, either adjusting these parameters on the fly, or doing a mode-switch/reboot, such as to avoid having them permanently set, if only occasionally required.

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You can create your own scripts to setup different environments with different settings …

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I have install Kali on my old MacBook Pro late 2008, becouse OS X from that time is practicaly unusuable … Internet browser does not indexing correctly, programs won’t install, and everything is outdated … After 40 different editions, Kali is perfect solution for this upgraded machine, so I have practicaly got a “new” laptop…

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The only thing won’t work after instalation is Wi-fi and bluetooth … Find the way for wifi so it works, but bluetooth is still searching…

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By default the Bluetooth service is not started in Kali. Did you configure it to start automatically or at least ran the command to start it?

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I’ve been using Kali since it changed from Nethunter. Way back then it was buggy as hell and the developers didn’t want to deal with a bunch of OS bug reports and the forums were really for pen testers and they didn’t like non hackers using kali. I couldn’t get any help becausse in all the forums I’d get told that if I have to ask that questioon then I’m not suitable to run kali.. They were more interested maintaining the tools. Kali slowly got less buggy. Now it is very usable for noobs, unlike kali of the past. I got it because I was interested in hacking. But then I discovered hacking is hard work. But I kept the OS because I was used to it.

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I’ve been using Kali as a daily os for a few months and I think its just because people have been told that.

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Well, I used Kali long time ago when I had no internet connection at home while I had an issue with Telecom that lasted for 6 months, and it was back between 2008 and 2010. I don’t recall what live version of what was then called BackTrack. Internet via SIM phone provider was a deluxe thing which I didn’t have. So I had to use BackTrack,while running KISMET and other tools to collect ISVs of a WEP Wi-Fi then lunch an offline attack on the collected data to crack the password and I succeeded in like 30 minutes. Since then I haven’t touched Kali nor a Linux OS. Coming back to Kali as my daily OS was a challenge but definitely less challenge than it was back then.

Yes, Hacking and Security in general are difficult to implement, understand, and move around especially if you have no programming background or experience.

I don’t pretend nor aim to be Mr Robot, but I’d like to and I am slowly learning

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Using Kali for more than 3 years as a daily driver. Nothing wrongs with that.

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Hello guys. So I had Kali live on a usb with persistence and I was impressed enough that I did a full install on my device. Everything is working great. Only thing that I do not have access to at the moment is Bluetooth because my device is not equipped for it. But with a simple dongle I can solve the problem. There is so much to learn. Also, the learning curve is not as difficult as it’s made out to be. Another thing for me is that I do not like the word “can’t”. That just makes me want to do it even more.

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Is there any forum for pentesters where we could learn knowledge about this from basics

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For free you wouldn’t what you are looking for. Only if you pay and it depends on your instructor and how serious are they. The best option is to start reading on your own, but there are tons of books to buy, almost 90% of them are generic and quasi useless for the real practice. Only few books are worth reading and buying.

If you want to start from scratch, you first have to know how Linux world. It doesn’t matter if you then proceed to be a real good PEN tester or a graphics designer or an artist using Linux, without the basics there is really little you can do. Lots of users are Hackers wannabe and once they see the real Hacking stuff they just back off. It is hard, period. To learn the basics of Linux if this is your first steps then I suggest you to read

Linux Basics for Hackers by OCCUPY THE WEB, instead if you are a visual learner then I suggest you a Udemy course named Kali Linux Tutorial For Beginners by Tareq (the instructor).

It all depends on your persistence and will in learning.

I know that this comment might irritate someone, but truth is to be said, Hacking is hard and the learning curve is steep. It requires time, effort, will to learn, and an elastic mind. Some people say that a programming skills is a nice to have but for me it is a must have rather than a bonus skill.

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There are many forums out there, however I personally don’t advise to use forums to learn pentesting simply because nobody is going to teach you anything, you’ll only face pushback no matter which forum you try out.

Reason for this is that pentesting is a broad topic touching many areas of IT, so when a noob shows up the best one could tell them is to learn the basics about IT unrelated about pentesting because this is fundamental to be able to learn pentesting.

A house is not built from roof to bottom but from ground up.
So if you want to learn pentesting (which can be thought of as of a roof) then you’re doing it wrong.

I suggest your learning process to go this route:
1.) Using Linux and Linux administration, from basics to most advanced, try to be Linux Admin.
Knowing Linux will make Kali easy to use for you.

2.) Learn programming, you should know at least 3 programming/scripting languages, suggested ones are Assembly, C++, Python, these 3 can make you all powerful although are not enough to be skilled in all areas.
Programming is essential for pentesting, without knowledge of coding you won’t succeed.

3.) Lean about networking and cryptography, these 2 topics deserve their own section and should be mastered from both Administrator perspective and programmer perspective.

Once you feel comfotable about these 3 things you can jump into learning Kali tools and basics about pentesting, it will make many thing familiar and easy to learn.

Last but not least, the most important is to learn to get used to read various manuals, docs and references, and only use forums when you’re stuck with specific problem because forums won’t teach you anything.

Note down everything you learn in form of short notices, e.g. create a private repository on GitHub and commit your notices there.
Reason for this is if you don’t note down you’ll forget things, so you want to have a resource made by you to remind yourself as needed.

Dedicate at least 5h per day to learning IT stuff, and after 10 years you’ll be a pro.

If you want to ignore this and jump straight into learning kali tools and pentesting know that you’ll be nothing but a script kiddie who will depends on others rather than being able to do thing on his own, you need to be self sufficient, in other words you’ll fail if you’re not.

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Amen brother!
Or, we could also use this forum to share experience, opinions, and teach each other. That is a a dream, just like herding cats, but who knows, come cats might just join!

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We could but we could also lose patience very soon.

Many new comers take the wrong approach, many of them come from Windows world knowing nothing about Linux and then want to learn pentesting.

You better have the nerves of a horse to explain them they need to postpone learning kali until they learn basics first, and I know they’ll ignore you in 99% of cases.

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