Continuing on from a previous toot about my interest in *nix systems... I mentioned liking customization. I also like to "hack on things" which is how I tend to customize my stuff.
For anyone not familiar with that phrase (I only learned of it recently) it's not the same as "hacking" which I also like to do. I like to learn hacking stuff and test it on my old machines so I can help friends and family when they have computer security issues or questions. It's also just fun as hell to set up your own private network and see what you can do to snoop on it or break it. Breaking stuff gives you some good insight on how to fix it. When I played around with Kali linux to learn/practice pentesting on my network, I was horrified by now much data I was able to sniff out. It sure as hell gave me a better appreciation for cybersecurity experts.
Most of my *nix play time has been with Kali and before that Kali's parent distro, Debian. One of the weirdest things I ever did that I now realize was kind of a mix of hacking and hacking-on, was an old Mac Powerbook 3400c I once had. It was a mac from the days of system 7. Rather notorious for not playing well with others lol. I ended up having to hack into the firmware of it to enable to monitor's backlight, but I got Debian running on it LOL. Since it was a laptop that I got strictly to be a an experiment lab, I also managed to get NetBSD running on it.
That was my only real exposure to any form of BSD. I was just a little too used to Debian at the time to switch to learning BSD. But, now that I am out of work and thus don't HAVE to have a windows machine to work from home, I have been reteaching myself Linux with virtual box. In doing so, I periodically come across some info about FreeBSD as well.
So, I have been doing some side research on FreeBSD as well. Not much, but enough to learn the differences in the userland sanity, which I have to say is a big point in FreeBSD's favor. I also like how it seems so minimal right out of the gate and you install bits as you go and need them. It's like the antithesis of bloatware lol. It also helps that the pkg system is so much like apt lol.
So, here is my current dilemma. I have been reteaching myself on Kali (i know, you shouldn't use it as a daily driver) but I like that it's so up to date with rolling releases compared to Debian stable, and still more stable then Debian Sid. I also want to keep up to date on the Kali pentesting tools so I can quickly demonstrate to a company why they should hire me for security at an interview lol.
I would like some opinions on what y'all think I should keep as my primary environment for all of this but also which you think would be a better platform to help me learn python on.
If it's not obvious, I am getting ready to make THE move permanently away from Windows and really dive into the "custom system" world. Ideally, I would like to have a laptop that is capable of running Qubes OS quite well. Then I would also have VM's there, but would still like one of the Qubes to be my personal virtual environment that I would "live in" for the most part.
Thoughts, ideas?
