I have been watching a lot of videos of top hackers in the world showing what can be achieved with hacking and what can be prevented. I have noticed that all of them except one had mac book pros. Why so? is there an advantage to macs vs p.c.'s for hacking? wouldn't Linux be king? I am new to hacking and just trying to get all the info i can.
OS X is unix that 'just works'.
Most probably those guys don't want to use windows and don't want to waste their time solving issues with running desktop linux (because they have actually important work to do), so OS X is the most reasonable thing for them.
And well, macbooks have decent hardware.
True but there are a lot of rock solid Linux distros now but doing a little working around in the mac would be easier. I just thought that a slim gaming laptop for half the price of a mac book pro with Linux would be better suited for finding exploits.
Mostly its the all metal build quality of the Mac laptops and that OS X has a usable terminal, emacs and the MacPorts repo of Linux and BSD software that runs on OS X that they after.
Just look at any Linux conference, theres tons of glowing apples going around, though they are at least dual booting Linux and OS X, though many devs are tri booting Windows as well.
So if i were to look at a Linux distro for this, what would you recommend? I admit I am a bit of a P.C. fan boy but I have in the past owned macs and was quite happy with the software but disappointed in the hardware. I even have OSX 10.8 on my main rig with windows.
I'd start with Mint, personally I like the older look and feel of the Mate desktop edition, though you may like the Cinnamon desktop version, under the hood they are the same, the only difference is the desktop manager. You can change desktop managers on a whim, just some people don't like to have the excess packages installed if they don't need them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdYF_R6Ulh8
If you are already familiar with the command line and want something lean and customized to your needs then try Arch, the setup is a bit involved, but once you have it where you want it you'll pretty much always be on the bleeding edge.
If you want something that's just going to be rock solid stable and progress at a glacial pace try Debian or CentOS. Debian is one of the base distros that have existed for forever and a day, same goes for CentOS, as it's just the free rebranding of Redhat Enterprise Linux. Though both are more at home in the server closet then the desktop.
Linux console - nuff said.
Besides Macbooks jus work solidly without any compatibility issues .... also virtual machines work quite well if you need any platform for identification or some other falsly sent stuff.
not that I'm into hacking or anything, but logic wins :)
I dont know about newer generations, but macs are not what you would want to use for hacking. Unless you want to get hacked. The administrative password is extremely easy to change. If I remember correctly all you have to do is shift or command S at bootup. It starts up the terminal and there is a command you type. Then you can change the root password.
macbooks have decent hardware.
That's probably the main reason.
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In highly doubt that a hacker would use macos for anything with sensitive security needs.
Often hackers will use macbooks with macos just as a remote terminal. So the computing part of the hacking often isn't done on the mac-books itself.
Often hacking isn't related at all to security: in which case mac-books are a good choice.
That said if you go down the rabbit-hole far enough, you will bump into barriers with macos, because it's proprietary software.
True hardcore hackers probably have moved to open source hardware like the novena labtop. Not because the NSA is spying, but because proprietary firmware might be too constraigning.
Kali Linux will have a lot of the tools you need out of the box.
Get a Thinkpad with linux.
I'm not sure why would you want to flagellate yourself like that but to each his own. (Thinkpads have great support for linux, I'm not saying you shouldn't but just because you've seen some dramatic documentary about hacking doesn't mean you should do it too, but it's commendable that you're willing to learn, unlike me :P I've had some rough times with linux for less than a week and gave up)
Where's Zoltan with a teal deer when you need him?
I don't know who would seriously use IOS for hacking ... but apples hardware with debian or ... yeah ... almost any linux-distribution would work just fine .... at least in my opinion ... everyone#s got a different flavour you know