Kali Linux is a well known distribution for Penetration testing and digital forensics. It is widely used bye ethical hackers; it comes pre-installed with large set of security related applications. It is maintained and developed by the organization known as “Offensive Security”. It comes with over 600 tools pre-installed that help you perform tasks like network analysis, ethical hacking, load & crash testing etc. Here are some of the well known and most popular applications that come with this operating system.

John the Ripper

Namp

Wireshark

Burp suite

Bbqsql

Grabber

Se-Toolkit

U3-pwn

The most recent release of this operating system Kali Linux 2.0 is out now. It is powered by Linux kernel 4.0 and has enhanced support for different graphics cards and desktop environments. Let’s see how we can install this new version and get familiar with it.

Installing Kali Linux 2.0

Download Kali Linux 2.0



There are couples of ways through which you can initiate the install of this OS.

(a) Download Kali Linux and burn it to DVD/USB drive and boot your system using this DVD/USB.

(b) Create Virtual machine on your current operating system using tools like Oracle Virtual Box and boot your Virtual machine using ISO of this operating system.

Whichever method you choose, here is the very first screen you should see when booting your system using this ISO. Let it boot into live desktop.

From here, click System >> “Install kali” option to start the installation process.

Select your preferred language for this operating system installation.

Choose your location from next step.

Specify your keyboard layout from this step.

Set the hostname for your this new installation.

Select “Yes” from here to confirm the write operations on hard disk.

That’s it, the new operating system installation is underway now. Sit tight, it should take little bit time to complete, depending on your system resources and your network speed.

Once the installation is over, reboot and start using new operating system.

Conclusion

Kali Linux is the advanced version for old BackTrack penetration testing operating system. This new 2.0 release is being considered a major and important one. Kali Linux has very rich internet community and you can find lot of help and internet articles on the topic.