I am curious about users with more experience than me. I went through my first course in EH and learned most of it in Kali. However, there were several cases where the instructor used Ubuntu (and didnt give a reason).
I know that there are some tools that are only available for kali I think. But isnt Kali a Debian branch like Ubuntu? So what works in Kali should work in Ubuntu correct?
Would you guys give me some advice as to which one is better and why?
Thank you
You can pentest on any *nix distro; Kali is just much more convenient because it includes almost every tool you need to get started, sans all of the great scripts and tools you’ll find on Github (which a lot are considered mandatory).
Not a huge difference as they are both Debian-derived Linux/GNU distributions. I prefer Kali Linux because many of the tools are already installed.
I am personally using Arch and have Virtual(kali on it) for PenTesting.
Depends what you do…
Thank you, everyone!
Hmm seems like it a preference. So, Kali, you have most of the tools preinstalled while if you use others then you need to install them yourself. So it saves time with Kali
Also consider that as of now (until 2020.1 is released I think) Kali is not recommended to be used as a main os… Since you are always logged in as root… It is still recommended to not use it as a main, but after 2020.1 root is no longer the default user…
Oh so that is why everyone uses it in a VM. I thought that was the case as doing pen testing can damage the os is someway and a total reset is sometimes needed.
Kali used to have a few kernel patches for wifi work applied, that weren’t in the regular builds. Other than that it’s just a huge amount of preinstalled tools you likely will never never need.
I recommend starting with a clean ubuntu, and then just add tools as you need them. That way you will only have tools you use, and you will actually learn how they work and what they can do 
@scud78 That is actually a good point. I have seen a dozen or so post here where they have several tools that do pretty much the same thing (as far as I know) so that maybe because they are using Kali with all of them installed and just can use them.
Hi All,
Came across this old convo and am after some advice.
I have been running Kali Linux in VM, always have. Problem I am encountering is my laptop letting me down. I have an older laptop and have put Kali on as a vm, downside to that is its annoyingly slow. Dont get me wrong, its functional. BUt its frustrating having to limit the hardware.
I know using Kali as an “everyday” OS probably is not a good idea, or convenient. So I have purchased a ThinkPad T420 with the intention of just updating a few bits on the cheap.
I am in two minds on just using that laptop purely for pentesting and enumeration research. WOuld be able to utilize all the laptops hardware that way.
Question is, this a good idea?
Any advice and opinions on it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
A VM is usually cleaner and a bit more convenient than running your HTB OS directly on the hardware, but there really isn’t any major reasons to not dedicate a laptop to HTB.