…Yes?

I mean, its the hacking OS. It’s used by pentesting professionals all around the world. It has hundreds of tools meant for doing penetration testing. So I would say you could definitely “hack” using Kali Linux.

As someone whos running on Kali Linux at the moment, I can give you some details, as well as answer some of your questions.

• No, just because you are able to successfully pentest on Kali Linux doesn’t make it easy nor for everyone. You could hack on a fresh arch install, but that wouldn’t be easy either.
• Kali Linux is basically just a Debian install with tools that come with it. Its something you could probably set up yourself. I like it because of how it looks, and I use the tools on a regular basis.
• Some of the tools are paid for, but most are free to use as well as open source.

Think of Kali like a toolbox. If I hand you a box with a hammer, a screwdriver, a wrench and some bolts and told you to build a car, that would be considerably difficult if you had no idea how to build cars.

On the same note, Kali is just a box of tools. It has a bunch of stuff that can be used to pentest, but if you aren’t experienced or if you don't know anything about penetration testing, it doesn’t do much for you.

Having Kali doesn’t make you a hacker just like having a wrench doesn’t make you mechanic. Its about what you know not what you have.

Now, while everyone here seems to have covered the basic points, I’d thought I’d give my 0.02 USD.

Cheers!

EDIT: The main point is you can hack with Kali Linux, but only if you know what you’re doing.

The equation I can use Kali Linux = I’m a hacker is definitely wrong, though.

For you to be a hacker, it takes more than that.

As for how to do it, google Kali Unleashed and check YouTube, you’ll find thousands of free materials about it.

_______________________________________________________________________

No offense, but the tone of your question makes me think you got no clue what you’re talking about, nor what you’re getting yourself into.

Someone told you Kali Linux is the hackers’ tool and, if you learn how to use it, you’ll be a hacker.

The goshdarn Hacking Holy Grail.

Hell, yeah!

Sure, they can give you a sheet of paper with “Ethical Hacker” on it, but you can pretty much use it as a toilet paper, for what it counts.

I got news for ya.

If you dare going around talking like that trying to get a job in the cyber security industry (by the way, talk about InfoSec and use “cyber” very sparingly in a professional context), be willing to get mocked and laughed at.

No operating system makes you a hacker, nor it can.

Knowledge, skills and attitude make you a hacker.

In most cases, it’s an inborn type of mindset and I agree with Quora User on this.

Hacking is not easy at all, darn it, and I repeat it for good, in case you guys didn’t listen to me hard enough so far.

It’s fuck*ng hard and frustrating and boring and makes you feel like sh*@*t because you don’t know if what you’re doing works, if it’s gonna ever work, nor what you’re doing wrong.

You’re on your own; either you learn by yourself and fast, or you sink miserably.

Things change fast in cyber security and you need to keep up.

I had your same naive attitude, then I realized I couldn’t get a damn thing out of those tools, so I went back to the drawing board.

I learned Linux, Python, PHP, still studying C/C++, Assembly, Ruby and I still feeling I’m going nowhere, I don’t know enough and I’m not smart enough for me to be a hacker, if I’m gonna ever be one.

I don’t know what the hell I am anymore, by now. I guess I’m on a highway to hell (LOL).

I can’t stop learning but I don’t know where it’s leading me.

So, yes, Kali, is free of charge but knowledge is only apparently free.

It costs you your life, your darn time sitting on a computer trying to get answers.

Notice I said get answers, not ask for answers. I try to find the answers myself first.

No one hands you over the answer, nor it’s fair for anyone to do so.

The search path you go through is much more important than the answer itself.

Then cyber security pros are frickin’ busy and they don’t have time to waste, unless you do something that adds value or solves a problem.

For example, I gave my company a script for them to automate certain searches.

That GOT THEIR ATTENTION.

Even if they thought my code was crap, I had done it myself and in my downtime.

Think you got a clearer picture now.

(Source: Rustic Handmade Wooden Chairs About Furniture Image Collection C81 with Handmade Wooden Chairs)

If I give you all the tools of a carpenter and ask you to replicate chair shown in above picture would you be able to do that ? if not then ask yourself what else you will need to do that. Now if I give you the same tools and ask you to make some chair with the design no one has ever seen in the world, would you be able to do that ? if not ask yourself what else you need to come up with a completely new design idea. Thats what hacking is - design ideas (in this particular case - flaws / bugs) which no one has ever seen. Once someone has seen it, its gone ( technically - fixed )

Hacking is the art form of computer science, you can not make art with just the tools, you have to image it, you have to visualize it. Some people are born with these imagination, others can learn.

Technically speaking “computer hacking is about finding flaws or bugs in a computer system and then using those flaws or bugs to perform some operation by the computer system which it is not supposed to perform”. While doing hacking your first goal is to find flaw or bug, The more understanding you will have of this computer system the better you will be at finding flaws. So while learning hacking your first goal is to learn computer system.

Limiting to hacking, the areas of computer system you can focus on is i) The run-time ii) Computer Networks iii) Databases

1. The run-time. It is the part where your software is executing. Few part from hardware and few part from operating system makes up this run-time. I will emphasis on Memory Management & Layout and CPU execution here because at the day end this is what the hacker can manipulate to tell the computer system perform something it is not supposed to perform. I will also emphasis you have to be master of the unknown in this area and if I ask you precisely what happens when you start the execution of a binary file, you should be able to tell me with the precision of CPU registers and memory addresses.
2. Computer Networks. Because mostly you will use this medium to do your hacking activities, so you must be master of different communication protocols, how they work, what are different network design topologies used in complete systems,what software are used for these protocols so that — coming to our original goal of finding a flaw/bug — you can find flaws/bugs in those software or protocols (a network software is an implementation of a protocol, if you have found a flaw in protocol, you have found a bug in its implementation) and you can use that flaw/bug.
3. Web Technologies and Databases. Remember our original goal is to find a flaw / bug which is a hard job so we must add more software to our software pool to increase our chance of finding a flawed system or buggy software. This is also important because a world wide web is also used by many layman users and those are also the ones who can give you quite a good opportunities (unknowingly) to perform your hacking activities successfully.

Flaw or Bug. You may have noticed I have used flaw / bug almost every where. Technically speaking A flaw is a problem in the computer system design where as A bug is a problem in the computer software implementation. If you revisit the definition I have mentioned above, our core goal is to make computer system perform operations it is not supposed to perform. We can either use a flaw to achieve this or a bug. An unwanted and insecure open port on a system is not a bug but its a flaw in the design which, a hacker, can use to perform an operation, this system is not supposed to perform. A memory crash in a software is a bug which a hacker can use to manipulate the execution of a software to allow the execution of a code the system is not supposed to execute.

Now coming to the practical steps you can take to start your learning journey.

1. The first thing I have mentioned above is The Run-Time. If you start with learning programming you will be more closer to run-time. Start by learning C Programming and emphasis is on run-time. How this program is being executed, how it is laid out in memory. What are the registers being involved during its execution. How jumps, buffer overflows, addresses and every internal details of your program work. How your operating system work, how its process management and memory management work and all the internal details. There is an interesting and very famous article on memory layout and buffer overflows. I find this course on Coursera | Online Courses From Top Universities. Join for Free very useful for beginners.
2. Learn different network topologies and protocols, what are the inside protocols involved from your computer to some website. How your request is going to reach to the end server. Web technologies and web development. Cross side scripting, cross side request forgery, sql injection etc.
3. Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn and never stop it. Practice as much as possible.

As far as Kali Linux is concerned, its just a toolbox and is useless unless you don’t know how to use different tools inside it and those tools are also useless unless you don’t know what tool you want to use and why you want to use it. You are scanning open ports, your corporate network admin will come to ask you buddy why you are scanning ports.

Good Luck

I'm just gonna say it bluntly, but based on your question, you don't have any idea what you want to learn. Learning to code is just part of hacking, really small part. It's the analysis of what you hack that is the main thing. For you to analyze these you need tools, and Kali Linux includes a number of these tools. Some hacks does not even need codes. Some of the best hacks were done using social engineering to get user information. You can con people to get their passwords and hack into their account.

Most hackers need to understand cyber cecurity and how to circumvent it. A lot of times, they study the flow of data to find vulnerabilities and explot those vulnerabilities. If you heard about the heartbleed vulnerability, the exploit was found by constant monitoring and trial and error. To use the exploit, you don't even need to code, you just need to use a tool that is commonly available to most linux distro.

So yeah, basing on your question, you have a very long way to go. Start by reading past hacks and how those were done. You'll see that coding is a small part, it's the hacker’s creativity and analytic skill that always finds exploits. And you wouldn't understand how to find those exploits if you don't understand the system. And you need tools for those… and tons of working knowledge about tons of different things.

Also, find a college/uni that teaches cyber security courses.

Kali is an operating system designed by hackers for hackers. It was created by Offensive Security, and is constantly being updated.

But here’s the thing with Kali:

It’s really nothing special. The tools that it comes with can be download for free to most Linux distros. However, with Kali, all the work of downloading is already done for you, which is nice.

Yes, Kali does have a lot of useful tools that you can hack with if you know what you are doing.

In my experience, Kali can take a lot of getting used to. I still have never touched well over half of the tools that it comes with. The sheer amount of power packed into it is staggering.

That said, Kali is designed for professionals, so it will take a bit of getting used to. Research well, and you should be fine!

Remember, using Kali does not make you a hacker, but it can sure make a hacker’s job easier!

Happy hacking!

—Ken

I love this question for a few reasons. One, you obviously have heard about this amazing “hacker toolkit” in some form or another and (hopefully) are incredulous that this could really make “hacking” relatively easy. Two, you are new to the field (if even currently working in said field), and are just getting your feet wet, if at all, in the world of Penetration Testing/Auditing/”Hacking”. If you’ve asked these questions with doubt and curiosity, that’s actually good news. If you’ve come to confirm you can “hack” and just want to get a yes/no answer so you can “start hacking”, i’vee got some unfortunate news..

Kali Linux is a variation off of an older Distro known as BackTrack. Simply states, Kali Linux is a Linux distribution built around focusing on Penetration Testing and Auditing. It comes with hundreds of popular tools and implementations that, in theory, will give you what you need to successfully perform, report and deliver a Network Audit. Does that make it a “Hacker Toolkit”?

Sure. But again, realize what I’ve just laid out. This is a set of tools, most of which are command-line based (No cute GUI here, Armitage/ZenMap and a few others notwithstanding), and, at the very least, require a strong command of Linux console, TCP/IP, networking, python…. the list continues on for quite a while.

I’ve been in the field for 8 years now, and still feel like I just started a few months ago. Aside from having a strong background in Linux, multiple languages (python, assembly, C, PHP etc etc..), years of on the job training, 10–30 EXTRA hours of personal research (partially out of intrigue, MOSTLY because of the job demands), and countless hours of reading whitepapers, videos, presentations and more have THANKFULLY made me competent with Kali though - to a degree.

I know the old statement is “You’re only as good as the tools your are working with”. This does apply to the Sec Field, but would make more sense if “Tools” were replaced with “knowledge”. That being said, I like to push peopole curious about Kali and other similar toolsets to do the following:

1. Set up Kali Linux Live on a thumbdrive with persistence and full encryption.
2. Get yourself a basic setup - load, login, hook into your local network and just see if you ping another computer on the same network.
3. Try to get 1 peice of information from said computer - anything from the name of the network its on to its mac address and subnet mask etc.

Were you able to accomplish this without heavily relying on guides and youtube videos? Good! You’v got a place you can start LEARNING THE BASICS of Kali’s intended purpose and application in the world. No? Put your thumb drive, “hacker toolkit” and dramatic dreams of being a hardc0re hax0r away, grab a few (hundred?) books and whitepapers on linux, networking, TCP/IP and more, and start learning for real. You are wasting time playing with Kali Linux without a basic grasp of the foundations of Penetration Testing and Auditing.

“You are only as good as the tools you are working with” … “PROVIDED you understand the basic underlying concepts of those tools”. That’s seemingly a much better way to end that statement. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you have to even ask this question, you aren’t ready to take advantage of what Kali has to offer. Good luck in any case!

Start off with just using a Linux Distribution as a daily driver and just forget that Windows even exist. Do not use Kali Linux as your daily driver because that is very dangerous. My suggestion is use Linux Mint or Ubuntu. When you start using Linux as your daily driver, you will start needing to use terminal to get some things done. When ever you need to use terminal, search google and find which commands to use. That way, use it for at least 3–4 months. During this period, you will get accustomed to using Linux. Now, if you don’t know programming, you need to learn programming first. Python would be my suggestion for a beginner. Now that you know programming and assuming you are using Linux as your daily driver, Start watching some tutorials on youtube to learn basic Linux Commands. After you are done with basic Linux commands, start learning advanced Linux utilities like writing shell scripts and awk scripts and also you need to be developing your programming skill at the same time.

Now I think you will be ready to jump into Kali Linux. Just remember that Kali Linux is not any special. It is also just a Debian based Linux Distribution just like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. The only speciality with Kali Linux is, it is Penetration testing ready out of the box and nothing else. Start searching for some online courses or youtube tutorials for penetration testing and ethical hacking and use your learnt skills in the Kali Linux this way, you will get very much accustomed to using all the tools of Kali Linux. Now use your programming skills to do more interesting stuff in ethical hacking.

I think I have answered more than what you asked for..

Have a good day and stay curious :)

SaiKumar Immadi

First — I’d check your motivations. Kali Linux is a “ethical hacking” focused distribution. If you are looking to begin a profession in cyber security, start with the core of the internet:

• tcp/ip - IPs, ports, packets, handshakes, SSL
• software - coding, debugging, configuration, package discovery
• operating systems - file systems, package managers, log files, security controls
• firewalls & proxies - stuff that sits between you and the thing you are trying to look at

Linux can support your education on all of those things, and nearly every distribution (Redhat, Ubuntu, Centos, Mint) will allow you to get started on that road.

If, instead of learning how all this works you just want to have some tool to show off to a cute geek girl, google “script kiddie” and download all the tools that come up. Fan favorites like Ethereal (now known as Wireshark) makes you look really smart while you have to do very little work.

Please note, I am not a lawyer, and I do *NOT* recommend getting into this field unless you’ve consulted with an existing cyber security professional or lawyer on the applicable laws where you plan to operate. Even if you break a law in another country and they are expedition friendly to the one you are living in, you still may end up with a free ticket strait to jail. Many hopeful (and smart) cyber security “grey hat” hackers have spent time in jail just because they didn’t consider the laws. Please don’t be that guy.

Cyber security tools are not toys. There are many people out there with a huge head start on you, and many of the people that wrote the tools you are looking for are working for agencies that will hunt you down. If you break a law and you get on their radar, you will go to jail.

Now, go learn how things work and use your powers for good.

Learning Kali would be the equivalent of learning Windows or MacOS. Kali is the name of the Linux Distribution by Offensive Security that hosts a collection of applications used for penetration testing.

What you want to learn (in addition to learning Linux) is how to use the tools that are included with Kali. I would recommend that you get the OSCP certification (Offensive Security Certified Pentester) from Offensive Security. It is one of the best certifications for pentesting; i.e. ethical hacking. Otherwise, you could look at Free Cyber Security Training and Career Development | Cybrary for learning about cyber security, ethical hacking and more.

Kali linux has almost all the tools required for ethical hacking, but the point is when and how to use them.

So

If you are already in computer field such as computer engineering or information technology or related stream of engineering then you would be learning about the computers, networking and programming a lot. Study that with heart not only for marks but for knowledge purpose. Then you are ready to go.

If you are not in computer related field then also the whole online world is open for you.

You can then participate in CTFs on All about CTF (Capture The Flag) For the various challenges and look at the solutions after the competition. This way you can learn a lot about the ethical hacking.

Meanwhile you can learn about various aspects of computers online from various online courses which are completely free and are highly rated.

I think you should know some of the programming languages also and

1. Python is best for that purpose because it makes the work easier and faster.
2. For reverse engineering and exploitation you should knowledge about assembly language which you will get to know in software security course if you don't know already.

Here are some of the useful online courses that will help you to step into the computer security field.

1. Cryptography on coursea from Stanford university Cryptography I - Stanford University | Coursera
2. Software security on Coursera from university of Maryland Software Security - University of Maryland, College Park | Coursera
3. Hardware security on Coursera from university of Maryland Hardware Security - University of Maryland, College Park | Coursera
4. Networking course from Cybrary - Online Cyber Security Training, Free, Forever cybrary contains a number of other courses which are great for learning about security.
5. https://www.wechall.net lists all the sites that contains challenge sites that offers various hacking challenges that are completely legal and safe.

So just knowing the tool won't help you much. You should have the purpose to use it. On the challenge sites you will find various discussion forums that will help you with the challenges in case you get stuck.

Apart from that you can take ethical hacking certification but it will cost you money.

Sorry for bad English.

Hope it helps you.

Let me preface this by saying. If you’re asking this because you’re one of those ransomware / bounty shops that sends me crap CVE’s every week they got out of a openvas/nessus run claiming a bug bounty, just stop, because you clearly don’t care and don’t want to read the rest, and frankly can’t manage anything past an nmap anyway.

For everyone else, apologies, please go ahead.

Learn INFOSEC in general and go into the field for a couple years. Honest to god “hacking” / penetration and data exfiltration (without getting caught) takes skill. It’s not something you’re going to pick up without serious dedication, a lot of labs, and a mentor.

If you want to get a serious idea about what the hackers are doing these days, watch the defcon talks from the past so many years to see the evolution of the group as a whole…. and also watch the corporate sponsored talks from RSA.

Almost all the “ethical hackers” I know are working for corporations providing security jobs, all the way from administration to finding zero day exploits and publishing.

Just depends on how skilled you are and what kind of mentors you have.

There’s videos on youtube with stuff like this, which is IMHO cracking, and nobody would care if you came to them and showed them these skills.

So frankly, you’re not going to learn much of anything from this, but it’s better than nothing.

I haven’t seen one of these that covers anything more than cracking. For example in that video they show some stuff which shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to teach someone with a translator in between.

Maybe I have higher standards.

You could intern at places like Xforce, those guys are good, or get to know some of the infosec group and what they’re trying to achieve, the heavy hitters are relatively easy to find, they’re on linkedin like everyone else.

On a similar line to what Kim Guldberg said...

If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't be using Kali.

Kali is not designed for beginners and it's not designed for daily use. Learning to use Linux (if you don't already have much familiarity with it) can be a helpful way of learning more about how software is put together and how an operating system runs.

Similar to the way that learning a new (spoken) language helps you to develop a better mental model of how language works, learning a new operating system can greatly improve your mental model of how your computer works and where issues could arise.

Kali is not designed to help keep you out of trouble while you learn, though. It's a handy toolkit for people who already know how to stay out of trouble on their own.

Also, while you want to be ethical, the reality is that you can actually pretty easily mistakenly break the law (or get close enough to it that people start asking questions) with the kind of tools installed on Kali by default, if you don't have a very clear idea of what they do and why.

No. Kali is just a Linux distribution. What makes Kali suitable for pen-testing is that it comes loaded with many tools frequently used by professional pen-testers.

It also makes Kali a bad choice for hackers who don't pen-test. How? An ideal hacking distribution should be light. After all, if a distribution is loaded with tools you never use, it is not a great idea.

The correct use of Kali

Kali should be used when a system is under development and requires pen-testing and this is the area where Kali is used by professional pen-testers (the other area is where Kali is used by 11 year old kids who think the whole Internet is weak to Kali).

If you want to hack a system which is already in production, Kali is useless. But of course, some companies are lazy enough to not even vaccinate their systems against script-kiddies.

Buy a few t-shirts, with something cool written on it. Any good hacker should have cool t-shirts.

Grow up your beard. All hackers have beard, of course.

Put plenty of cool stickers on your laptop, you can order then online. It does not matter if you don't understand what they mean.

Start watching tv series about geeks and hackers, watch tutorials on YouTube. You don't need to understand them, just learn a few words and acronyms. Use them in talks with other cool hackers.

Or just rack your brain and learn the basics of networking, TCP/IP before posting immature messages like this. Maybe even go to school and learn computer science. If you are not too much lazy, you could end up selling computers in a shop…

Either of them is fine.

If you have a good knowledge of Linux beforehand, using some other distro, you can go for Arch. It is much easier to install, light and likeable. However, it comes with the barebones, you will need to install the required tools. Of course, it is really important you have experience in using Linux, else it forces you to learn! Arch enforces the user to learn the system’s working, which can be a kind of curse for beginners.

Arch installs much faster, Kali installation is slow and you get a lot of unnecessary tools (which you might never need or use), so wasting time and space in installing those isn’t recommended. In Arch, you can install the tools you want, setup your environment accordingly and you can install the tools you get in Kali. You can install any software you want to use in Arch.

This is based on my personal experience. Every user is different, you might like either of them.

Who told Kali Linux is the only tool that an Ethical hacker must have? Apart from Kali there are various linux distributions available for penetration testing. First of all, you must have to learn linux properly, before using Kali. And only using Kali, you won’t become a great ethical hacker. There are some steps that you must have to face challenges, to become a cyber security professional.

1. To become a Ethical Hacker, you must have to be expertise in Coding, Web Development, Networking, Computer Hardware, Operating Systems, Server Side Scripting, Information Gathering, Cyber Reconnaissance etc.
2. You must have to know Various types of bugs found in the IT Security industry such as CSRF (Cross - Site Request Forgery), XSS (Cross - Site Scripting), SQL / Blind SQL Injection, LDAP / Blind LDAP Injections, HTML Injection, XPath Injection, US Social Security Disclosure, Buffer Overflow, Heap Overflow, Zero Day etc.
3. You must have to know, how to patch up the software or server using appropriate hotfixes and securing the unsecured network protocols by restricting access of it.
4. You must have to know which exploit can crash the appropriate server operating system in metasploit for example netapi exploit crashes the web server for Windows OS and Samba Exploit Crashes the Linux web server.
5. If you find any Intrusion, you must have to find the intrusion using IDS / Honeypots and try to kick the person out of the network, who had intruded into your server.

Just Kali linux is not sufficient...
If you have attacker machine you should have victim to attack...
1. Create two virtual machines.... one with Kali Linux(Attacker Machine) and The other one with Windows XP(Victim Machine).
2.Make sure they both are in same virtual LAN.
3. Install Nessus on Kali machine and try scanning your victim(XP Machine).
4.Once Nessus identifies some vulnerabilities(High Severity) with remote code execution search for them on Metasploit.
5. Exploit your victim machine with Metasploit.

Each step above may take 2 to 4 hours, So have patience.. and njoy ethical hacking...
It is just for starting... Once you are used to Metasploit you can try to customize,edit already existing exploit and then create new exploits....
Then expand your knowledge base to web security..
Try SQLMAP in web security and log all the requests sent by SQLMAP and understand how SQLMAP fetching data from the victim...

Every expert is a script kid once....
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step....

Any help ..!!! feel free to query on Quora..!!!! All the best..!!!!

The Question seems confused. But let my try to answer any way

Hacking can have different meaning and I am assuming that since you have mentioned ethical hacking you are a person interested in getting into another’s computer for testing it’s security aka penetration testing .

As is self evident in your question there is much confusion in your mind of what hacking actually involves.

So let me clear some things up first .

Kali Linux is a Linux distribution where the authors have packaged some of the best Penetration testing software available . If you have Linux as OS in you computer you can actually install all of them independently but What Kali Linux does is save the chore and time for you .

Before learning any of those things as asked in the question I would suggest you to get grounded in the basics of networking is this is where most of the things happen .A strong background in understanding different OSes are also a plus .

Although being an expert in programming language is a plus it necessarily isn’t required for being a penetration tester ( ethical hacker in your lingo ) . But a rudimentary understanding of how to read code and logic behind it is desirable . So if at all you do feel like learning some programming language I would suggest Python . Please do learn it as it would go a long way if you choose penetration testing as a career.

And to get you started may i suggest an excellent website resource for you to get started which is free of cost .Penetration Testing Course, Learn Hacking Online for Free - Cybrary

It is a well structured course suitable for a beginner in penetration testing .

Kali began as BackTrack and that had a fearsome reputation. The main advantage was the huge number of tools built in. That then became Kali Linux and again, the sheer number of built-in and ready to go apps made it a good choice.

However lots of pro hackers will recommend against Kali for several reasons, but mostly because it’s a dangerous OS for beginners to use. It’s like passing your driving test and buying a Honda Fireblade. When you are a proficient hacker it is a much better choice. For noobs it’s a terrible choice.

A better start for hacking would be something like Mint. All the same tools available but a much higher level of secrecy, anonymity and protection.

Kali has a good reputation now (thanks to ethical hacker courses and television programs) but I would posit that half of all Kali users don’t have a fucking clue how to use it, let alone how to stay safe among a terribly harsh peer group.

It doesn't matter which OS you use for learning programming language and ethical hacking. I would suggest you to focus on techniques which are used for hacking rather than depending on OS and tools. Kali linux is an OS preferred by most of the security researchers because it has security tools already installed in it.

You should avoid using kali linux as your main OS as it allows you to become root user. So if a person with wrong intention gets root access then it could be dangerous for your system.

You can install ubuntu or any other distribution if you want to install linux as your main OS and use kali as virtual machine.

Oh no! It's absolutely a shame. You definitely need powerful processors, expensive GPUs, the latest version of Kali Linux running with hacker pictures as wallpaper, else you are doomed.

Jokes apart, you don't need anything of the stuff mentioned above. All you need is a reliable source of knowledge to learn from and a very basic to moderate setup for practising it.

I agree few software are bulky and requires a good system but not for beginners. Just install a bare-bone Linux on raspberry pi and you are good to go.

Kali Linux is like driving an army tank on the first day of your army training. You definitely don't need that. Just use Ubuntu, try few programming languages, write some code, install few scripts and enjoy.

Cyber-security knowledge hub:- hackology

No. You just need training and to know what you’re doing. Linux, and other *nix OSes, are good to know. And one fun thing about them is, and you can do this for Windows as well, is you can load it on a flash drive and have the PC boot to your flash drive using it as if it were the hard drive. The best part of this? It doesn’t show up in the logs.

I’ve got a flash drive for all OSes from Windows XP all the way through to Windows 11 and several flavors of *nix.

As for hacking, most of it is done by simply probing systems, recording what happens occasionally on Notepad and seeing what happens when you do “this”. And I don’t suggest you do so unless you literally know what you’re doing.

Kali tools are all self explanatory

Start with setoolkit:

Doing things by your own and learning it by doing is the best method to get a good hand on these tools.

For explanatory purposes there are tons of videos on each tool on youtube.

Things to Learn:

1. Information Gathering “Dmitry”
2. Database assessment “jsql”
3. Reverse Engineering “javasnoop”
   
   A lot of tools are there and they have explanatory videos on Youtube .
   Happy Learning.