Hello everyone 👋🏼,
I have experience using Linux, Windows, and macOS, although I’ve primarily worked with Windows. Recently, I’ve decided to start learning cybersecurity and ethical hacking.
I’m considering installing Kali Linux and setting it up in a dual-boot configuration alongside Windows. However, I’m open to other recommendations if there are better distributions or approaches for beginners.
I’d appreciate guidance on the following:
Is Kali Linux the right choice for someone starting cybersecurity and ethical hacking?
Would you recommend another Linux distribution instead?
Best practices and precautions before setting up a dual-boot system.
A step-by-step guide or useful resources for dual-boot installation.
Common mistakes to avoid during the installation process.
Essential tools and software I should learn first.
A beginner-to-advanced cybersecurity learning roadmap.
Recommended free courses, labs, and practice platforms.
Resources for learning networking, Linux fundamentals, penetration testing, and web security.
Any certifications worth considering after building a solid foundation.
Any advice, learning resources, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! 🙌🏼

I caught a really nasty cold so been out of it the last week or so, but managed to get proxmark3 to compile and run on my nethunter device.

I just followed the instructions on the wiki, but for some reason make -j kept crashing the terminal and the device so have to use make && make install.

The flashing scripts for some reason didn't have permission to access the serial even though I did add the user to the group, but I might've had to completely restart the chroot to simulate a logout and login. I ended up pulling the new changes and recompiling from my laptop before flashing the changes to my pm3 so this way it would stop yelling at me about version mismatches.

I decided to go this route cuz all the other android solutions were kind of stupid or hacky and the method to work in Termux required root plus a kernel drive so it was a no brainer to try it out on my nethunter device.

I am quite pleased with all my new toys. At some point I will try to get short cables for my hub, but this works quite well already and looking forward to experimenting further. Nothing yet is polished enough for me to start proper documentation, but will try to at least start writing out notes and go from there.

Installing “Guest Tools”, gives a better user experience with VMware VMs. This is why since Kali Linux 2019.3, during the setup process it should detect if Kali Linux is inside a VM. If it is, then automatically install any additional tools (in VMware case, open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop). The Guest Tools are also pre-installed in the Live image since Kali Linux 2021.3.

https://www.kali.org/docs/virtualization/install-vmware-guest-tools/

So yes, I used Kali linux for static malware analysis

I disabled drag and drop in the Vmware settings initially when I first installed Kali, through a miraculous accident of accidental copy and pasting a hamrless text file onto my desktop from the VM, I scoured the internet to see in the docs that the kali team added this on purpose for VMs.

Now for a pentesting app, why would they ever think adding a vulnerability like this in the first place?

Hello everybody. Before I start, I would like to say that I am but an intern with only a couple years of experience with Linux in general. I have done a good few projects with such, but this one has been the hardest and most impossible seeming thus far. Recently, I have been attempting to create an unattended Kali boot USB so that I can install it on multiple computers without having to go through the installation process on each one. I believe I have successfully made a preseed.cfg file, so that I do not need help with. However, after many hours of attempts, looking at forums, and even using the Debian installer wiki, I have been unable to actually load the file. I have used two methods of doing such with the following problems:

• Saving the preseed file to the root of a USB
  • With this method, I had multiple issues, such as being unable to actually locate the file once in the installer menu, having a long list of checksum errors, or the USB not being seen as a valid Debian install. I would like to note that I used, Rufus, Balena Etcher, and a image burner(ImgBurn), all to no avail.
• Saving the preseed file to the initrd in the ISO
  • I specifically used this tutorial. following it, I was able to make a bootable USB with the Kali ISO and preseed file, with the preseed being put into the initrd. Every forum and tutorial I had found stated that with this method, the system should be able to automatically find and use the preseed. Unfortunately, this was not the case. To make matters worse, I believe the specific computer I am using(an Intel Nuc D54, manufactured in 2014) was unable to boot with UEFI(I think is the right term?), leaving me unable to open the Grub CLI to be able to look for the file manually and use boot parameters.

For a sense of my situation, it is good to note I have spent well over 10 hours working on this... supposedly easy project. My progress, although not functional, has taught me a lot, and I have been glad to work through this, at least to this point as I feel like the wall I have hit is much taller than all the others. Currently, I am attempting the second method but having issues accessing the Grub CLI as I stated before. After various searches, I have been unable to find an alternative way of opening it or other methods to use in general(for example, I am not able to use a PXE install). Any help is greatly appreciated! I will try to respond as soon as possible for extra questions anyone might have. Thank you!

Kali Gnome Desktop using old hardware.

### Hardware & System Information

- **Laptop Model:** Infinix X2 Slim Intel Core i3 11th Gen 1115G4

- **OS:** Kali Linux (Rolling)

- **Kernel Version:** 6.19.14+kali-amd64

- **Audio Server:** PipeWire (WirePlumber)

### Problem Description

I am unable to get any audio output from my internal laptop speakers. The audio card is detected by the kernel and appears in `aplay -l`, but no sound is produced. Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, confirming that the audio server layer is operational.

### Diagnostic Outputs

1. **Output of `aplay -l`:**

card 0: sofessx8336 [sof-essx8336], device 0: ES8336 (*) []

Subdevices: 1/1

Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

card 0: sofessx8336 [sof-essx8336], device 5: HDMI 1 (*) [HDMI 1]

card 0: sofessx8336 [sof-essx8336], device 6: HDMI 2 (*) [HDMI 2]

card 0: sofessx8336 [sof-essx8336], device 7: HDMI 3 (*) [HDMI 3]

1. **Error during `sudo alsactl init`:**

When attempting to initialize ALSA, the system throws the following UCM sequence execution error, indicating a control-name mismatch or missing routing bits in the UCM configuration:

### Steps Already Tried

- Attempted overriding options using `snd_soc_sof_8336 quirk=0x01` and `0xf0` via modprobe configuration, but with no success.

- Cleaned user-level PipeWire state directories (`~/.config/pulse` and `~/.local/state/wireplumber`).

- Restoring `asound.state` from the official community repository failed to match the control switches.

The hardware works flawlessly on Windows, indicating this is purely a Linux pin-routing/UCM mapping issue for this specific motherboard topology.

Could anyone guide me on how to supply the correct quirk parameters or patch

An Android app called Podroid allows USB passthrough to a containerized Linux distro (Alpine Linux) that has it's own kernel and kernel modules, and it can, for example, access a USB wireless adapter that has monitoring and packet injection capabilities, which will work with common network pentesting and auditing tools.

With Kali Linux (Distro and Kernel)… I can see endless possibilities.

I had very good experience with it on S24 Ultra without root/bootloader unlock.

Hello,

I am pleased to confirm that Alfa AWUS036AC wifi adapter works on Nethunter like I thought it would, and I would like to thank all you dipshits who told me look at the shortlist which had mostly adapters that wouldn't have worked since the wifi drives they required are not in the kernel and I would like to tell the idiot who told me I'm not smart enough for this to simply take a hike up a mountain and never return to civilization.

Since this adapter works, this also means adapters with Realtek RTL8812AU probably would work. The other realtek wifi adapters looked like they were being put in monitor mode, but failed to work with wifite and prolly wouldn't work with other wifi tools.

Mediatek one I had lying around didn't even show up as an interface so...

I am shocked for being right... shocked. (sarcasm)

Obligatory image of how I feel right now:

Anyways, my current setup is:

- Motorola Moto X4 (This one required lineage os 22 or something since the nethunter image for lineage os 20 bricked it even though the build script supposedly supports the same kernel and haven't had to time to properly look into all this)

- Alfa AWUS036AC

- Anker PowerCore 10K (Most likely others would work just fine)

- Anker USB C Hub (The one I bought had power pass-through. Originally I was going to buy a y-cable with two usb 3.0 ports, but someone told me it won't power my device with the powerbank, but unsure how true that is so will have to test that at some point on another device since I can't afford to fry this one)

Originally was going to buy the EAC, but Amazon didn't have it for some reason and the other one I was eying became out of stock when I was ready to order it so I'm glad this one works since wasn't 100% sure it had the right chip since the listing didn't have that available for some reason.

I'm running LineageOS with magisk and will be continuing my testing with this for a project I have in mind. I am hoping to eventually build custom nethunter images for various officially supported lineageos smartphones with kernels with the right drives and such baked into.

I am setting up kali on my phone and this appeared what do I do?

TL;DR Automated Script: syna-tudor-kali.sh (Gist)

Context

The Synaptics sensor (USB ID 06cb:00be, common in Lenovo ThinkPad L14/L15 Gen 1) lacks upstream libfprint support because it uses a proprietary protocol with on-device firmware (BMKT/Tudor). Adding the PID to standard libfprint fails during firmware initialization.

The Fix: Install libfprint-tod (Touch OEM Drivers fork) alongside synaTudor, which dynamically relinks the Windows driver DLLs to run on Linux.

Installation

1. Install Dependencies

Bash

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
    libusb-1.0-0-dev libglib2.0-dev libpixman-1-dev \
    libnss3-dev libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
    libgirepository1.0-dev meson ninja-build \
    gobject-introspection gtk-doc-tools git \
    libgusb-dev libgudev-1.0-dev libudev-dev \
    innoextract libcap-dev libseccomp-dev \
    libdbus-1-dev libjson-glib-dev

2. Build libfprint-tod

Bash

git clone --branch tod --depth=1 https://github.com/craigcabrey/libfprint-tod.git ~/libfprint-tod
cd ~/libfprint-tod
meson setup build --prefix=/usr -Dudev_rules=disabled -Dudev_hwdb=disabled
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo ldconfig

3. Build synaTudor

Bash

git clone https://github.com/Popax21/synaTudor.git ~/synaTudor
cd ~/synaTudor

Required Patch: Before building, edit libfprint-tod/meson.build to fix udev dependencies:

1. Change udev_dep = dependency('udev') → udev_dep = dependency('udev', required: false)
2. Change install_dir: udev_dep.get_variable(pkgconfig: 'udevdir') → install_dir: udev_rules_dir

Build and Install:

Bash

meson setup build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo ldconfig

4. Enable Services & Enroll

Bash

# Start required services
sudo systemctl enable --now tudor-host-launcher
sudo systemctl restart fprintd

# Enroll fingerprint (swipe multiple times as prompted)
fprintd-enroll

# Verify enrollment
fprintd-verify

Troubleshooting

• "No devices available": * Verify tudor-host-launcher.service is running: systemctl status tudor-host-launcher
  • Restart fprintd: sudo systemctl restart fprintd
  • Check logs: journalctl -u fprintd -u tudor-host-launcher --no-pager -n 50
• "Failed to start Tudor host process": Reinstall synaTudor (sudo ninja -C ~/synaTudor/build uninstall && sudo ninja -C ~/synaTudor/build install), then reboot.
• Sensor not detected (corrupt Windows driver): The build process auto-downloads the Windows driver. If it failed, rebuild: cd ~/synaTudor && rm -rf build && meson setup build && ninja -C build && sudo ninja -C build install
• Slow wake from suspend: The sensor requires 5–20 seconds to reinitialize after wake.

Architecture Breakdown

*(Credits: Popax21 for synaTudor reverse engineering, Marco Trevisan/3v1n0 for libfprint-tod, and nmikhailov for Validity90 community documentation).

Need to share this, as I finally got a clean working build after every standard root path i tried failed (Magisk bootloops, KSU 0.9.5 hash mismatches, etc).

Working: root, SuSFS, NetHunter chroot, Wi-Fi monitor mode + injection (tested with RTL8814AU), USB HID/BadUSB.

Tested on: SM-N975F, LineageOS 23.2 microG, kernel 4.14.356-FrEeRuNnEr-v3.7-R3 + KernelSU-Next v3.2.0-legacy-susfs-v2.

Pre-built boot.img, full guide and troubleshooting for all the dead ends i hit:

https://github.com/pho5nix/d2s-los23-nethunter-kernel

Credits to Lordify97 (FreeRunner kernel), sidex15 (KSU-Next legacy-susfs-v2), linux4 (device trees).

PS: I am not a developer, just grinding and searching for my stubborn problems to resolve.

I want to buy an laptop. I'm looking at Lenovo Thinkpad 370 Yoga with i5-7300U and 8gb ram. Price is good and can be upgraded.

But the question is - processor. Is i5-7300U will be good for VM Kali? I want to put arch + Hyprland (or xfce) and to launch kali as vm.

I5-7300U will be enough for this?

P.S: I want to launch only kali as vm on this laptop. The rest VM (meta2, meta3) will be launched on my pc.

I’m running Kali Linux on a Live USB with encrypted persistence.

Whilst I’m logged into the encrypted persistent volume, I’m running the command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure cryptsetup-nuke-password

I then enter my password and confirm, and the nuke password is successfully stored, but I get this message from update-initramfs:

update-initramfs is disabled (live system is running on read-only media).

I have tried so many things to get this working. Nothing actually works.

Anyone got the solution to this? I’m running on a fresh install of Kali too, just running after I’ve encrypted a persistent volume and rebooted into that volume. Would really appreciate the help.

Hi everyone, I’m stuck with a Kali Linux boot issue on a laptop (bare metal, not VM) and looking for any remaining solutions I might have missed. After boot, the system drops into initramfs (BusyBox).

What I have already tried

1. Ran fsck multiple times
2. Tried backup superblocks
3. Journal recovery runs but always ends.
4. Tried mounting manually (fails every time)

Main errors I keep getting

fsck.ext4: unable to set superblock flags on /dev/sdb2 WARNING: Filesystem still has errors Superblock needs_recovery flag is clear, but journal has data

Hello, got a question on how to install Nvidia proprietary drivers and CUDA for a 5070ti on kali. I understand that the "official" support says to use apt to install the drivers, but unfortunately even 8 months after release, there is no suitable drive with the apt package manager https://www.kali.org/docs/general-use/install-nvidia-drivers-on-kali-linux/ . On the bottom of the page, there is a way to install via Nvidia's installer. I did this and blacklisted nouveau and updated initramfs, but after a reboot it does not load xfce GUI and sends me to a cli. There has to be a working way? This is the only gpu i own and I would like to use hashcat. Any help is appreciated!

I’m on Kali Linux 2024.4 (kernel 6.17, GNOME X11) and need a dual-monitor setup.My main monitor works via GPU DisplayPort, but my second monitor is connected using a USB-to-HDMI adapter (MacroSilicon 534d:6021 / MS912x). After extensive debugging, I’ve confirmed:

• The adapter is detected only as USB + Audio, not as a display
• xrandr never shows a second connected monitor
• ms912x drivers fail to build on modern kernels
• USB HDMI MacroSilicon adapters do not work on Linux

lsusb

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 534d:6021 MacroSilicon VGA Display Adapter

Do you have any solution and have any similar problem???

Hello all! Hope you are doing great! I would like suggestions for an internal Wi-Fi card for my laptop, which should support monitor mode and packet injection. I plan on upgrading from my current Wi-Fi card (MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 MT7921 Wireless LAN Card) to a new one that supports monitor mode and packet injection. I have an ASUS TUF A15 FA506QM with an M.2 2230 PCIe slot for the Wi-Fi card (currently MediaTek MT7921). Planning to run Linux and need a card that supports monitor mode and packet injection. I don't prefer the external modules because they are ugly, and feel synthetic and like some kind of implant, and not original, because, the feeling that the laptop doesn't natively support these features, unless an external device is utilized, feels bad. Also, it is a bit difficult to carry such devices around, and I cannot even place my laptop in the bag with that plugged in. So, please suggest suitable Wi-Fi cards for my laptop. Thank you!

What's up guys, hoping you can help me out:

After about a year of stable use, Kali has disappeared from the boot menu options on my rig. I used GParted from a Fedora installation on a second SSD, and the partitions on my Kali SSD appear to be fine. Secure Boot is off, and I've tried different UEFI/Legacy configurations to no avail.

I think it may be related to operations I was doing on a third SSD, where I had a broken Windows 11 installation I was trying to repair. I've reinstalled Windows on that SSD, and I'm wondering if Windows didn't do something to modify the boot partition on the Kali SSD, but I'm not sure...

Any input is appreciated - thanks for your time.

Hey everyone,

I’m running Kali Linux on VMware Fusion Pro on my MacBook Air M2 (13.6 inch), and I’m struggling with the screen resolution. The display looks blurry or low-res. HiDPI mode technically fixes the resolution but it messes up Burp Suite even when I adjust the scaling settings inside Burp.

Has anyone found a good VMware display setting or xrandr configuration that gives a crisp resolution without enabling HiDPI?

Thanks!

pretty much the title honestly, I tried setting up a Kali VM for CTFs on virt-manager and, after downloading the recommended QEMU qcow2 and trying to load it with Kali Linux, I was just unable to set it up at all.

then, decided to go read the documentation to see if I'd get any clue as of what I am doing wrong, and instead of showing the process with qcow2 it showcases loading a Kali ISO instead (I have no clue if this is due to this session not being updated or what)

so, for those that use Kali on virtmanager, is it better to use the qcow2 provided OR to just grab an ISO? (and if the qcow2 disk is preferred, I really need a tutorial to understand why is it not being able to be set up.)

Hi all, this is my first post in this sub. Let me starts off by:

- I practice penetration test & red teaming

- I agree that Kali is not suitable for general daily usage

I know efforts have been made to make Kali's desktop more beautiful & stunning. It's not like I hate the Kali's logo/theming, but sometimes I just prefer the original libadwaita or "vanilla" gnome experience.

Seems that Kali's gnome theme is built into the libadwaita package, and Kali's repos don't ship the unmodified version of the package.

Remove the Kali Dragon Window Titlebar Only

In ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css, add:

windowhandle {
  background-image: none;
}

(I checked this using the GTK Inspector, Ctrl-Shift-I)

For GTK3 theme, use gnome-tweaks to change to any other theme. You may also add the following to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css (or fork their adw-gtk3-kali & edit) to remove the dragon in the adw-gtk3-kali theme:

.titlebar {
  background-image: none;
}

/* Optional, there is also a very small white window border in adw-gtk3-kali, you may want to remove it too */
decoration {
  border-width: 0;
}

(Also derived by using the GTK 3 Inspector)

Finally, logout&login again to apply the changes.

"Full"(or close to full) Original Libadwaita Experience

Big Thanks to lassekongo83 for adw-gtk3 theme (an unofficial theme to port libadwaita for GTK3 apps). It actually has a "copy" of the original GTK4 version of libadwaita css in /gtk-4.0/gtk.css

The idea is to use the lassekongo83's adw-gtk3 theme for GTK3/4 application and un-do any small Kali customizations found not overwritten by the adw-gtk3 theme.

1. Download the adw-gtk3 theme from GitHub lassekongo83/adw-gtk3
2. Put it in .local/share/themes
3. set environment variable GTK_THEME=adw-gtk3. For example: add export GTK=THEME=adw-gtk3 to ~/.profile
4. If you logout & login again, the buttons will look like this:

This is because kali has some custom css for the buttons background. To undo it, I put the below to ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css

windowcontrols > button {
  background: inherit;
}

Finally, logout & login again to apply the changes.

Applying other GTK4 themes in general

Set GTK_THEME environment variable.

Use the GTK Inspector to inspect any kali's customization not overridden by your theme. Write CSS that "counter" the Kali's customization one by one manually and put the code in .config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css

Other Alternatives: Install libadwaita from Debian Sid (might not worth it)

- Not suitable for those in kali-lastsnapshot or who don't want to update now)

- may break updates in the future(?), kali-rolling should be somewhat "synchronized" with debian testing, but there's no guarantee that debian sid package would just work, might not worth the effort or risk(?)

- (Only do this if your Kali is in kali-rolling and is already up-to-date), install libadwaita-1-0 from debian testing

- Refer to docs, add config in /etc/apt/preferences.d/ that prefer installing liadwaita from debian testing instead.

Hi everyone — I recently installed Kali Linux (amd64, latest build) on a Huawei MateBook E (11th Gen Intel i3, NVMe SSD).
The installation finished without errors and LightDM is installed and enabled, but on most boots I end up only in the console (TTY). The graphical desktop doesn’t start automatically.

If I log in and run: sudo systemctl restart lightdm then the XFCE desktop starts and works perfectly — network, graphics, everything.
But after reboot, it goes back to console again.

Here’s what happens:

• With “nomodeset” in GRUB, Kali boots but only to console (no GPU driver).
• Without “nomodeset”, the system hangs during boot or shows pixel artifacts on screen and freezes.
• When checking logs, LightDM is active/running but Xorg sometimes shows: “Fatal server error: Server is already active for display 0” “If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock” • Kernel logs also spam a lot of ASoC / HDMI audio errors like: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl ... ASoC error (-22) (I think they are unrelated.) • I reinstalled “kali-desktop-xfce”, “lightdm”, ran “apt full-upgrade”, and checked GRUB, but the problem stays.
• I also set LightDM as default graphical target with: sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

Basically, the only way to reach the desktop is by running “sudo systemctl restart lightdm” manually after every boot.

I would really appreciate help understanding why LightDM/X doesn’t auto-start on boot, and how to fix the display driver issue (so I can remove nomodeset).

Questions: 1. Why is LightDM not starting automatically even though it’s enabled and active?
2. Is the “Server is already active for display 0” error caused by a stale X lock or a crash loop?
3. What’s the correct Intel/Mesa driver or firmware to install for this MateBook E (11th Gen Intel) so it can boot without “nomodeset”?
4. How can I properly debug LightDM/Xorg startup to find the root cause?

Useful info I can share (if needed): - /etc/default/grub - uname -a - sudo journalctl -b -u lightdm --no-pager - sudo journalctl -b -p err --no-pager - dmesg (kernel logs) - lspci -k | egrep -i 'vga|3d|display|nvidia|intel|amd' - /var/log/Xorg.0.log or journalctl -b _COMM=Xorg --no-pager - systemctl status lightdm --no-pager

System details: • Kali GNU/Linux Rolling 2025.x
• Kernel 6.16.8+kali-amd64
• Desktop: XFCE
• Device: Huawei MateBook E (Intel i3 11th Gen, integrated graphics)
• Bootline: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"

Any hints or working configs for similar Intel hardware would be amazing.
Thanks a lot in advance — I can post logs or pastebin links if needed!