Basically, it's an expression of my frustration with the hordes of newcomes to Linux who've seen Mr. Robot and think they too can become super hackers by downloading an ISO off of the internet. Kali is a great system, but it's a great system for people who know what they're doing. It breaks numerous rules and praxes which, for a normal desktop user, is devastating.
First of all, it is NOT meant for installation onto a hard drive. It's made for booting as a live USB, doing what you need to, and then shutting down to reset to a clean environment. By default, Kali doesn't do 99% of the things a normal desktop user expects.
Secondly, Kali runs as a single-user root. That means that all programs run with Kali have full system access. It's great for people who know what they're doing (and are booting from a USB, so that any changes don't matter anyway) and need quick access to everything, but it's catastrophic for desktop use. Almost all of the security benefits of Linux go out the window.
Third - it encourages the type of careless, unethical hacking that I despise. In the majority of cases, the guy who makes a post on reddit about whether or not to install Kali isn't hired by a company to test their network security - it's a kid who saw a TV show or googled a bit and wants to crack their school's wifi and impress their classmates.
Why do I die on this hill? Because I've been that kid with Kali's predecessor, Backtrack. I'm not a great and wonderful hacker. I was the textbook definition of a script kiddie - download some tools, attack some poor fucker with things I didn't even know how to use. I ground the school network to a halt with an incorrectly configured ARP attack.
Nowadays, I use Ubuntu MATE*.
Kali is not an operating system. Kali is a weapon. You don't use weapons to browse reddit or do your taxes.
Mirror of reddit/comments/5ndn44/dcapvg6
* Original post mentioned Mint, which is a bad distro for several reasons, and anyone who uses it should use Ubuntu MATE instead.