so ive been thinking about getting another small laptop for a while and running soley kali. ive been using ubuntu for a while and want to start learning pen testing. thanks to my local group influence.
so my quwstion is has anyone tried kali or any linux on the x220 or 140e. one is a i5 the other is a dual core amd. i think it would be fine if i slap a ssd and more ram. the main reason is because i read that the x220 gives a fulll work day + battery.
currently runing linux on a thinkpad x1
Yeah I run Manjaro on an X220 daily and its pretty smooth. It doesn't do to well with video at high bit-rates but for daily tasks its fine.
why kali? just use what ever distro and install the tool you want to use.
kali is just a combo of all commonly used tools.
its not meant for actual use. its a live boot dealio
I think you will be much better off with the X230. It has a third generation i5 right? Those Ivy Bridge parts are great. They aged really well.
Why not Kali? Yes, it's a fork of Debian with an assortment of useful tools, but if he wants to use those tools, then why shouldn't he use it? And if he's just going through the learning process, he doesn't need to run the OS live only. I would heartily disagree that Kali should only be run live. Obviously the developers didn't think so, since they provide a guide for installing it on your hard drive.
Kali needs to be run from a live environment. It runs as root, which means you can get spiked on hardware level. Kali is also not safe, DEB non-encrypted data transfer between repo servers and your PC are an ideal target for a MIM attack. Kali is a skiddie distro per excellence, if there is a distro where systematic MIM attacks in that way are to be expected, Kali is it.
I've never actually met a professional that does pentests with Kali. Most use their favourite distro with the tools that they need installed, on a portable virtual container on a burner USB stick. Kali is nothing special, it just contains links to standard CLI tools. Those links mean nothing, they are not of any syntax help, they are just bloat basically. All of the tools in Kali are bog standard linux tools that are available in any distro.
Kali is just marketing hype, nothing else. It's their second "cool name", but it still covers the same pretty pathetic load without added value, only with added target characteristics.
Just run it off a live or persistent USB stick. Kali is incredible as a learning tool, and I still use mine somewhat frequently to do some specific testing with, but I recommend moving on once you get the ropes of it.
I used kali's predecessor, backtrack a fair bit, and it was horribly broken to use as a desktop, it was even based on Ubuntu.
thanks for the tip guys. i will be using kali as soley a learning tool then will probably just custom arch it. again this is a spare laptop i will be taking to my local hacker space to learn. thanks for the tips on the laptop.
i assumed i needed a better computer to do some of the tasks
Go with the x230
Tough choice between 140e, X230 and X220. I would air on the X230 side just for the lower heat, although you're loosing the legendary X220 keyboard. Also as everyone has said above, don't install kali. Install a real distro and use the package manager to gather your tools.
yea i installed arch and going to configure it, i already made a live usb to practice. grabbed the x230 for 100$. i wanted the keyboard but i couldnt beat the price
how did you manage to get it for that price? my thinkpad just started to give the fan error.
old korean guy form korea town had a bad hdd. so no os or hdd. i have a few ssd laying around