Laptop for Kali Linux?

Hardware Hub Laptops & Netbooks
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I am interested in learning about Kali Linux. I have a few guides and lessons bookmarked already. This is purely hobby for me at the moment. So i am not looking for a rig that can run multiple vm’s on. I am looking more at a capable laptop.

My budget would be around $200 or less as i don’t want to invest much in hardware to start with. This would be purely for running Kali, not gaming or media use. I have looked at used Lenovo Thinkpads on ebay ranging with i-5 to i-7 as a possible choice. I have seen other methods of flashing bios to install linux on other hardware. But i don’t want to go through the trouble for that.

Is there any recommendations you could give that would be ‘better’ than the Lenovo route? Budget is strict on $200 or less unfortunately. Thanks.

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just grab a used thinkpad from your local E-thrift

they work fine and you might as well go full meme if you want to run kali

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Kali Linux is designed as a pentesting distribution that isn’t on anything more than a flash drive, there is not really a good reason to use Kali over an alternate distro. I especially recommend a different distro because Kali is, by default, always root. This is fine for a non-persistent distro that goes on a flash drive but is a really bad idea for anything else. 99.8% of all the tools you would want to use on Kali are available on every other distro as a command away.

Its also kinda weird to be “learning” about kali, you don’t “Learn” anything via kali that you wouldn’t by running ubuntu. there isn’t much to learn about it, there’s plenty to learn about pentesting though, which I still recommend learning about through a more versatile distribution.

That being said you really don’t need much in the way of hardware to run Kali. It really just needs to be an interface between you and a network.

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Kali: being the loudest makes everything else quieter

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thanks for the replies. kali is the distro i decided to go with. i am aware it is always root. the laptop will only be connected to a closed lan network i plan on setting up at a later date. if i wanted to connect it to the internet. i would be looking at a linux distro and vm kali. i had hyperV setup up with unbuntu, kali, and win10 to mess around with some. which led me to just getting a cheap laptop that would run it and slowly piece together a few more to have a lab to learn from.

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Why?

No reason to run it bare metal. Use it in a VM. Or, install Debian and assemble/build your tools on there.

Kali only has a handful of tools worth learning. It doesn’t make you anonymous or private out of the box. 0 reason to dedicate a whole laptop on it

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i am aware of anonymity and that it doesn’t out of the box. i am learning about linux distros as i go. teaching/researching myself. i appreciate the response, but there is reason to dedicate a whole laptop to it for me. it is learning about it by installing. getting familiar with that linux distro, learning the limitations and expanding on it as i go. i chose kali for first one. might be dumb or illogical to someone who understands linux. while i appreciate, what seems to be concern from you all, my question is based on the hardware that i could get on a budget capable of running kali. thanks

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The minimum specs for Kali are the same for Debian.

The installation process for Kali is the same as Debian.

All of these you can learn using a virtual machine.

You’re better off learning Linux by using Debian, Fedora, or CentOS.

Why you’re ignoring everyone telling you this doesn’t make sense. Good luck to you though.

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yeah, i don’t understand why people have a issue with answering a question about hardware. I thought i would give this forum a few years to settle in. looks like it hasnt changed since 2015. sorry to bother. i’ll find the answer myself or elsewhere.

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REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

As for OP any old thing will do nicely. I use an old latitude e6500 because it has a slot for wwan which can be populated with another wireless card. That’s probably the most useful thing to me since I’m using wireless tools most often. If you just want the MS framework it doesn’t matter much.

I also don’t understand why your question couldn’t be answered sooner. Then again I do exactly as they suggested and run mint with only the tools I’m interested. I have Kali on my thumb drive if I need it for other stuff but I rarely use it.

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There really isn’t anything to answer :man_shrugging:

The first two posts answered your question: You don’t need much.

If you want the official specs:

https://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-hard-disk-install

They list them on their website

A minimum of 10 GB disk space for the Kali Linux install.
For i386 and amd64 architectures, a minimum of 512MB RAM.
CD-DVD Drive / USB boot support

The reason I added additional information outside of your question was due to you seeming to lack an understanding as to what Kali Linux is. I am sorry if you found that offensive or abrasive. Let me explain:

Kali Linux doesn’t differ from other Debian based distros, except for the tools that are included out of the box.

These tools require advanced knowledge of Linux, networking, and scripting.

Another benefit of a VM is rather than fill up your hard drive with logs, you can take a snapshot of the VM once it’s installed and up to date. Run your audit or assessment, copy the logs, and revert the snapshot.

I assume you came to this forum because the people here have experience. Ignoring that experience defeats the whole purpose of coming here. If you find another forum to ask the same question, I can assume they’ll offer similar advice.

Again, if you interpreted our suggestions as off putting, offensive, or elitist, I apologize. That was definitely not my intention. But you’re not the first person to ask this and you won’t be the last. I’ve been in your shoes and I’ve assisted people in your shoes. You can run Sparta all day but without knowing what the results mean or what to do once you have that information, the entire ordeal is pointless.

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I think as far as hardware goes the only thing that I can think of that even matters is wlan support…and that’s swappable.

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Well, he said he was going to be on a closed off LAN.

Besides, I think ALFA are overwhelmingly popular due to their compatibility with passthrough and Linux VMs, especially for penetration testers and red teamers.

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True we still offer the best advices on the web. But meh don’t listen to experience have it your way.

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Alfas are nice because of their great snr. Where some may drop packets the alfas are usually going strong. Their antennas are the shit too. I have 2 of them now. Well worth the cost.

For most stuff though I find the internal adapter gets the job done and if you have to be that far away then a yagi is arguably a better way to go.

I might be dragging things off topic now.

Yeah, I agree for lan use it doesn’t matter much at all then. There’s not much reason to install it either. I mean you can, and it will work fine but you could also just fire up your favorite distro with DE of choice and get the utilities just the same.

I miss backtrack. It was more worth installing IMO.

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