This is a light, theoretical question:

Virtual Operating Systems have been recommended to me a/ I had trouble with resizing on my hard disc partitions. I have been investigating the possibility of trying out Kali (tools) to learn Networking (have been with Ubuntu for a year+ Windowses for a decade).

I wanted to get the LQ opinion on why virtual OS is good, (does it get in touch with drivers properly?) and why not use a "live OS on USB- Persistent" if I wanted to try pentesting lightly, as this option may ALSO allow for a kind of sandboxed environment?

What is the opinion of using Live USB Linux/kali, and what is it about Virtual that is better for a sandboxed environment? Have done OpenSSH& Telnet,Nmap, port scan, etc

The question "does it get in touch with drivers properly?" doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps you are asking if a VM can use the hardware of its host. The answer is "it depends".

VMs have the advantage that you can use your normal system in parallel. However, I don't know whether it is possible to use the same piece of hardware, e.g. a Wifi interface, on both the VM host and guest at the same time. Since you want to use it lightly, this may not be a concern, and if all you need for your learning is virtual hardware, you are fine.

On Windows, Kali is also available as a WSL2 application. I don't know whether it has reduced functionality, but it seems to be endorsed by the makers of Kali.

Yet another solution is containers. It allows you to run Kali in parallel to your normal operating system without the overhead of a virtual machine.

With live media, the advantage is guaranteed full control of the PC. Disadvantages: You can't use the PC for anything else while using Kali, and everything that requires access to files on the live media risks to be slow.

I would start with a VM, containers or WSL. You can move to live media later if you see that this is inadequate.

Some time ago, the Linux Voice magazine (which is now defunct--what's left of it appears in Linux Pro Magazine) published a Kali tutorial. They recommended setting up Kali and the target OS (they recommended Metasploit) in VirtualBox using "host only" network connections. With "host only," the two VMs can see each other, but not see or be seen by the Big Wide World, and therefore not attract the type of attention you might want not to attract nor accidentally damage anything.

Unfortunately, the old Linux Voice website is no longer available, and so too the link to the tutorial itself. Which is a darn shame, because it was an excellent tutorial. And an excellent magazine.

Note that, if you want to try this approach, you must give Kali a large virtual HDD, as some attacks on Metasploit can eat up a lot Kali's disk space.

A web search for "metasploit tutorial" will turn up a number of resources.

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Thankyou. I'm sorry I took a while responding I have been researching madly so I had something relevant to say/ask. But it still seems a very grey area despite attempts to read mostly OWASP & Georgia Tech info which seemed good. Otherwise it is apparently a subject of much consternation as to how to initiate host's licences so they don't have to keep being renewed for say VirtualBox, apparently, but it was hard to read so don't quote me. I am still reading and will no doubt find out better about this. Hate to get tied up in redtape crud! Thankyou for information though, I looked into containers but feel it's best to go with what virtual machines as so many are so it will be def. easier to find community info.

I can really see disk space for Kali would be a necessity! I just got more ram ddr4 and a 1TB NVMe so...that will help a bit. Thank god I don't have one of those stupid MS Surface Laptops as they only allow one SSD only, and only one usb3. Whatta blowout. I'm still not wanting cloud storage, ms, so...

-Anyways thanks for the tips-