Hello,
I wanted to start with Kali, and after reading that it's not recommended to beginners in such environment I have few questions. My ultimate goal is to, well, be able to "do good / great" on Kali. What is my first step? I have two devices to use, on first one, my main PC is Win10 and I wanted to put Kali (or whatever other OS you recommend) on my laptop which I don't use / barely use for anything. Meaning, I want to have only one OS on that laptop and I want it to be a good beginner and introduction to, later use, of Kali. Thank you in advance!

so you're a beginner,
not beginner penetrating distro....

they too are better designed to be on a usb stick so you can easily penetrate someone else to get the info you're looking for.

you can of course install any Linux distro then install what you need to penetrate someone elses system. wireshark and learn how to use it. and read read read up on the subject of penetration itself.

Ethical Hacking... hum...

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Kali is debian based, so first install debian and be familiar with it. If you can configure network/disks/filesystems/whatever, can install/setup different packages/programs (like firewall) and know how to use shell/python/whatever programming languages (including regexp) you can try Kali.

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Exactly - Kali is a specialized distro which is for penetration testing (hacking). It is not meant for daily use but you could theoretically use it for such if you were experienced enough. If you are a beginner, I would suggest another distro.

If you are interested in penetration testing, use Kali in a VM because you will have have far fewer problems and all the tools you will need work just fine. I use Kali for a living and that is how my test team does it.

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here is another really good one, but as stated before hand by me and others,

https://www.parrotsec.org/

it is not meant for daily "normal" usage.

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You keep saying you want to use Kali, so the best question is "WHY??" Kali is nothing special...it is a version of Linux that has a LOT of presets and utilities loaded that just make it convenient for security/pentesters. What do you think that being able to 'do good/great' on Kali is going to get you? Kali is just another distro of Linux.

You can pick ANY distro to start with; as you did with Windows, Mac or whatever else you used, you START USING IT and LEARN. That is how you get 'good/great' at something. I'd suggest Mint, since it'll probably work with your hardware easiest, and let you learn Linux. From there, you need to determine your path which will let you know what you need to learn. If you learn Linux, you will then have a foundation to load the tools needed to do other things, and how to think about/troubleshoot problems.

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Go for Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com/).

It should be a nice introduction to Linux and is a descendant of Debian as Kali is.

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Well, I do not want to "start hacking and pentesting" tomorrow, and, as I stated, and you all stated my statement, I WON'T use it DAILY. It'd be a fun hobby to learn, that's why I said I already have my Win10 which is my primary / daily OS, PC or whatever term you want to use. Another question is, for Mint, what's the difference between "Cinnamon", "MATE" and "Xfce" desktop? Thanks!

So, in Linux, unlike windows, you can have one of many different UI's or desktops. Too many to list here. Kind of depends on your hardware - KDE, Cinnamon and Gnome are fairly heavy on resources because they require 3d rendering on the desktop. Xfce4 is light, Mate is fairly light.

They are all "desktops" like you'd see in windows, just look different.

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To simplify it, the three desktop environments in question, Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce, are different ways that the desktop is presented and used/navigated, i.e. they are different GUIs to the underlying system, but each flavour also usually comes preinstalled with certain software too.

You can find screenshots of the different desktop environments on the web, but you can also download ISOs of all three and try them out in live mode (where you run them off a USB device/DVD and don't actually install them to your computer). Worth doing to compare and contrast them.

Also, have a look at the sticky https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ro-4175623119/ for more info on desktop environments and other terms that you may meet.

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as stated by me and others, you can pick any distro and make it into a Kali. first learn the basics to linux, if you do not know how to mount a drive, or ssh, ftp(s) into another sight, change to root, what two different environments su can take you to and how to ping even. ls or pwd to see where you are at etc.. the little things are needed to know first, then just install the others as time goes on so you will not become overwhelemed by all of what is already installed in Kali, or any other penetrating distro backbox for example is another one of them.

look at what they have under the hood first, then install that and learn how to get around with what is already installed in it to penetrate / access other distros, even windows, before you start pimping out your distro.

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Is there a way to "permanently" install Mint? I don't want to carry around my USB, which of unfortunately I have only 1, with a Linux distro on it. That's why I thought I could use a laptop. I downloaded Mint, made USB bootable with Rufus and done "OEM Install". Is there any other options, or is that it? P.S. I took Cinnamon desktop.

Yes. https://linuxmint-installation-guide....io/en/latest/

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