May be switching to Linux : Have Questions

Short background:

Windows user but use to use a Mac a lot of my childhood ( first time playing real rs was on Mac OS).



I have been doing a lot of research on Linux and I thinking between either

- Creating my own distro and desktop environment from Ubuntu mini VM
- Creating my own distro based on Parrot but removing most of the penetration testing tools to lower usage and download so I can possibly run it better through VM. I like a lot of the anonymity tools and some of its hacking tools may come in handy due to my future career being in network security and as a software developer
- Going with Parrot all together and not moidying
- Going with BSD ( my developer is running BSD on his main machine so maybe he can help me learn BSD )
- and soooo many other options I am looking at (mint, fedora, ubuntu , etc)

Also, I would LOVE to make my own environment with prebuilt backgrounds, UI, and specific tools/packages for security and distribute online? So say I wanted to essentially mod parrot to make it SUPER lightweight but keep a few security features like its built in proxy, create a website for the distro, and allow people to easily download it? I am not sure how that would work...




I am having a hard time deciding what to pick and how to go about doing this. I play league and games on my computer sometimes, and I have heard linux gaming is kinda shit, and I don't want to run league through wine off a VM because im not sure how that will affect performance overall. That leads me to think that I should just use it only on VM for web browsing and more secure storage, while only gaming on my windows environment.

Could anyone share their thoughts on distros they like, don't like, is parrot or kali worth it, should I go with small distro or environment if on VM and some other things you think I should know before jumping into linux.


Thanks

 

I really like fedora. It is simple and clean.

 

I really like Debian for a daily use. I rarely run Kali for security test.
The best thing would be to create your own district but it's not easy

 

I would honestly just run them each in a VM and test them out. I'm more of a RHEL/CentOS guy, but i've had the chance to explore most of them. I remember trying OpenBSD a while back, so I'm not sure what BSD you are into. Most likely FreeBSD?

 

Typically I would recommend going with a distro w/ good support like Ubuntu to start, and then transitioning to something else when you're more accustomed to unix in general. You're going to run into more problems than you can anticipate, and using a different operating system is a great learning experience as long as you have the willpower and support to solve problems as they arise.

Virtual machines can be useful in their own right, however it's not the same experience as fully commiting to a new operating system, and frustrating to not have full use of your hardware. As far as gaming is concerned, a good dual boot windows/linux should do the trick. Given drive space it's conceivable to be able to boot into multiple distros along with windows, and have the option to use whatever when your computer boots (drive space permitting).

Kali is a dope tool to have on an encrypted flash drive that you don't mind discarding

 

Creating your own distro is overkill. If this is something that really interests you and you're willing to go in balls deep, just get Arch and build on top of it to your liking. Manjaro is a good example of what you could achieve building on top of Arch. Just be prepared for an uphill battle because Arch is a pain in the dick, but who knows, you might enjoy the challenge.

I second this. @Eazy E if you're only thinking about using Linux and haven't used it to any real capacity yet, start small and work your way through the nitty gritty. Despite the strides Debian and by extension Ubuntu have made in making Linux user friendly it's still just a pair of training wheels duct taped to a supercar. Get used to the quirks under the hood before getting into anything crazy.

As for the VM, a dual boot is nice like Gold is saying, but I'm personally not a fan of grub, like, at all. Grub eats ass. If you've got an old laptop or something lying around maybe try getting a distro installed on there as the sole OS. I do that on my old 2008 netbook and the thing runs surprisingly well now. Otherwise a VM is fine especially if you're only using it to learn and not for anything serious.

 

So what I’m doing is using VMware work station and just booting up Parrot OS from it. I like it a lot because although I don’t use any of the hacking tools that much, I use the anon surf feature a lot. I also like how Ducksduckgo is the default search engine.

The desktop environment is good and the customability is nice. I have the machine about 5 gb of ram so I hope it’s enough ( has been working well).


I’m interested to see if I can run RuneScape or even Sythersps on the parrot os.

 

You probably can. That netbook I was talking about has 1gb ram total and runs basically any site just fine on Kubuntu. The trick is to use a window manager that uses software acceleration vs. hardware acceleration. Kde and xfce are good for that. Not sure what parrot uses.

 

Debian Plasma is what got me to stay with Linux, I find It very good. You don't need this Linux Mint, Ubuntu or ArchLinux business but Debian Plasma is #1.