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Harold Mansfield
02-25-2017, 12:21 PM
I recently re-purposed my old desktop and installed Linux on it. Been curious for years. Now that I want to know more about network security, Kali Linux is one of the main tools, so no time like the present.

I know there are probably an unlimited number of Linux distros and forks. Just wondering if anyone else runs Linux either on their every day computer, or as a hobby. And if you've always run it, or started with another OS.

Freelancier
02-25-2017, 12:47 PM
I have a CentOS VM I spin up periodically for development, but I rarely do network security on the server, preferring to control it at the upstream firewall.

Harold Mansfield
02-25-2017, 06:03 PM
I'm going to be setting up a VM (Virtual Machine) today. Can't wait.

Brian Altenhofel
02-26-2017, 05:22 AM
Linux is pretty much all I've run on my desktops, laptops, and servers for nearly 20 years.

Harold Mansfield
02-26-2017, 10:53 AM
Linux is pretty much all I've run on my desktops, laptops, and servers for nearly 20 years.

Which version do you run on your desktops and laptops?

If you don't mind I have a few questions that you can probably help with:

Do I need to be worried about any kind of anti virus? If so, which do you recommend?

I'm also looking for a software solution that lets me use one keyboard and mouse across a Linux and Windows 10 machine. Tried Synergy, ShareMouse and one other. None worked for me. Any suggestions?

Brian Altenhofel
02-27-2017, 04:57 PM
I run the Debian Testing branch, and occasionally I have to rollback an update because something breaks (that comes with "testing").

ClamAV has long been the standard free AV to use, and it's in most distributions' repositories.

I use Synergy across Linux and Windows (my laptop has a Windows partition for World of Warcraft - my only real exposure to Windows). One thing about Debian-based distributions is that many of the guides and documentation for one flavor will work on the other flavors with a few (if any) minor tweaks. Kali is a Debian-based distribution. I had a little trouble with Synergy soon after Debian switched to systemd from init scripts for services. If I remember right the Archlinux wiki was very helpful in pointing me in the right direction.

What I ended up doing was setting up the configuration for the server with the synergys gui, saving the configuration to ~/.config/synergy.conf, and adding a user-level systemd script at ~/.config/systemd/user/synergys.service with the following contents:



[Unit]
Description=Synergy server service
After=display-manager.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/synergys -f --no-tray --debug INFO --name caol-ila -c /home/veggiemeat/.config/synergy.conf --address :24800
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target



I'm sure a similar process would exist for the client if you are configuring the Linux computer as a client.

You can then add "systemctl --user start synergys" to your environment's autostart script.

Harold Mansfield
02-28-2017, 11:06 AM
I'm going to try all of that. By the way, I switched over to Fedora. Apparently I jumped the gun on the course I'm taking and needed Kali to run in VM. So that's what I'm setting up now. Will try Synergy again.

Thanks

Brian Altenhofel
02-28-2017, 12:55 PM
Fedora will be RHEL-based, so I can't help quite as much with that. But there are plenty of RHEL/CentOS resources available if you're having trouble finding Fedora-specific help.

Harold Mansfield
03-04-2017, 02:32 PM
So apparently I crashed the drive. I guess installing 2 OS's on it back to back was more than it was willing to take. It's my old machine which was going out anyway. Thought I'd play around for as long as it lasted.
Just going to order a refurb laptop to experiment on.

Harold Mansfield
03-06-2017, 03:22 PM
Fedora will be RHEL-based, so I can't help quite as much with that. But there are plenty of RHEL/CentOS resources available if you're having trouble finding Fedora-specific help.
Brian, do you know anything about Parrot Security? Looks really robust: https://www.parrotsec.org/

Brian Altenhofel
03-10-2017, 05:43 AM
Brian, do you know anything about Parrot Security? Looks really robust: https://www.parrotsec.org/

I have never heard of that distribution until now, but I haven't really kept up with all of the distributions out there for the past few years. As I get older, I can only keep up with changes in fewer areas of technology at a time.

Ironclad Systems
03-11-2017, 11:52 AM
Writing this post from Ubuntu 14.04 =) Have been using Ubuntu and a couple other flavors for a few years now. The only real limitation these days is high end gaming. If that's not your 'main' requirement, then Linux is a practical, robust and effective OS. Heck, you can run the whole OS of a USB stick on a PC with no HDD

Harold Mansfield
03-11-2017, 12:26 PM
I'm into learning about network security and white hat stuff, so versions focused on those seem to be Parrot, Kali, and Red Hat for Enterprise stuff. I liked Fedora, but think Parrot is where I want to be.

Harold Mansfield
04-27-2017, 11:11 AM
So, after a month or so of messing around I've dabbled with Fedora, but have focused mostly on Kali and Parrot Linux since my focus is on the security tools.

A few things I've discovered about hardware. I tried to run these in Virtual Machine on an SSD and each time within a week or so it failed badly and I had to reinstall Windows. Booting from a USB is OK, but still not as good as just running it on a dedicated machine.

After reading a lot of articles and forum posts seems to me that VM is good for some things in certain situations, and many people seem to use Linux in VM just fine, but it just seems best to run Linux on it's own machine.

Window shopping some used laptops to play around with now.

dwhs
05-25-2017, 05:08 AM
Not on a desktop but I dream of world where Linux rules the PC market. For now I just use it on my servers.

Harold Mansfield
05-25-2017, 10:00 AM
I ended up doing the dual boot option. I run my desktop pretty bare these days. Just software. And store everything else on NAS. I also have 2 drives installed. A regular 1TB HDD and I added a 250G SSD. So I just installed Fedora on the HDD, left Windows on the SSD and everything runs just fine.

mattkuter
05-29-2017, 11:37 PM
I have been using Linux in '93 before v1.0 was even released. I (not so?) fondly remember downloading and creating the 20 odd 3.5" floppy disks needed to install Slackware. It took forever to download over the dial up modem!

Recently I've been unsing Ubuntu as my main OS on servers and desktop. Although with the containerisation world of Docker I am now switching over to CoreOS as my main OS of choice for servers, but that certainly isn't for the faint of heart! :-)

Harold Mansfield
05-30-2017, 06:40 PM
I'm in the middle of an online course and the instructor uses Fedora. Not a big fan. Fedora itself seems fine for those who want to use it as their every day OS, but all the tools needed in the course are already installed in Kali. On the one hand I'm glad I'm learning to do from another Linux distro, on the other things would be easier if the class just used the best overall tool for the job rather than the instructors personal favorite distro. It's the tools in the OS that are the meat and potatoes and hard enough as it is.

When I want to go outside the class to learn something from another source which teaches in Kali, I'm basically simultaneously learning both and end up getting some of the commands confused.

First world problems, right?

Harold Mansfield
06-09-2017, 04:44 PM
So, I finally got a decent refurbed laptop for cheap, installed a second SSD so that it dual boots Kali Linux and Windows 10. Works flawlessly. Now I can run all my tools without having to reconfigure my main computer, and get out for some field testing.

So far so good.