Like most other distributions, Kali Linux will soon have a default non-root user. The ethical hacking and penetration testing operating system will be switching from “everything as root” security model to the new one precisely with the upcoming 2020.1 release.

The release is currently scheduled for late January. However, users can already test it via the daily builds. The change will be part of the next weekly build too, the developers said.

So what exactly prompted the team to switch to the new security model? “While we don’t encourage people to run Kali as their day to day operating system, over the last few years more and more users have started to do so (even if they are not using it to do penetration testing full time), including some members of the Kali development team. When people do so, they obviously don’t run as default root user,” explained Kali team lead Jim O’Gorman.

Though they don’t expect it to be a major change for most users, but going forward this should give users “a better security model” to operate under while they are doing assessments.

If you want to take a look at the new default non-root user model, you may either wait for the 2020.1 release or test it early via the new daily/weekly builds.