Moving from flavour to flavour?

Hi,

I've probably made a big mistake by making Kali Linux my main daily driver. I'd like to move to pure Debian, but my system is already very customized with all stuff I need tied to keybindings, i3 window manager etc. Is there a way I can take all installed programs and just shove Debian underneath that?

Thanks, guys.

backup /home and wipe.

you could also backup the other stuff you modified that is not in /home

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Ok, but is there an automated way to pick out stuff I modified? I played around with apache, sshd etc.

Also, I got a list of all installed programs with dpkg --get-. If I move to Debian and get /home back, can I do a reinstall of all that stuff? What stuff should I exclude to not make Debian into almost pure Kali again?

What actually is the difference between Kali and Debian? What would I need to change in Debian to get Kali and vice versa? I'm happy with it from a user's standpoint and I feel too deep in to tear myself off and start over again.

As @Dje4321 suggests, backing up /home is your best option, you'll have to reinstall software but most should already be configured after you install it, unless the config file is somewhere in root but you can back those up also.

Apache config files can be found in /etc/apache2 and ssh is /etc/ssh/ so you could also backup your entire /etc/ directory and selectively replace config files as you install software.

I usually install software on a new system as I go when I need it instead of all at once but there might be a solution for that but I'm not sure.

Kali runs as root, customizing settings are not stored in /home, but rather in /var and /usr

I would just wipe everything and start over, Kali is made to be run as live from a usb stick only once, usually after one use session the stick then gets thrown into the Rhine or the Danube...

Edit: if you believe the CIA, the Wolga doesn't exist any more because it was completely filled up with USB sticks

4 Likes

y tho

Honestly there is no way to automatically pick out all the little things you did and move them to a new distro. While kali is based more or less on debian, kali is a rolling distro so you cant just shove a new carpet in the room while the furniture is still there and expect good results, if you get what im sayin.

As others have stated, backup what you want to keep because its better to just start over.

If I were you I would resize the partition, or use another drive, and dual boot debian. You can then decide what you want to keep/move and work on making debian the way you want it then keep/dump kali later.

2 Likes

Seems like a little too much hassle for my workload. I do pentesting in my spare time (going for a job in IT ATM as well), but I don't see anything extremely unsafe/noticeably horrible with Kali. The two programs I use every day are WPS (word processor) and Okular (for showing me PDFs of what I'm supposed to translate), therefore I'd probably be looking at a more restricted Kali with AppArmor or SELinux.

@Zoltan

Jesus, what a lovely joke. But I guess at the rate the Russians are hacking, the Wolga would be clean, since they don't even turn those computers off!

Running root for everything is inherently a bad idea.

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That's true, but I can make another account for regular work and su/login as root when I need pentesting?

I would HIGHLY recommend you do that but I've honestly not tried, so I dont know what might break in kali doing so. Its meant to not have any persistence, thus making running as root not as big of a deal.

Well it's installed, it's not a USB live disk, so I can create as many accounts as my drug-addicted self pleases. If there are no huge differences between Debian and Kali other than Kali running as root by default, then there's not really much I have to change! Yay!

Also, I know it's you iDubbbz!

I see what you were doing with Kali Linux.

Oh hell yeah, I 1337 h4ck3|) him!

Jesus, just the "hacked" gave me some STDs.