Forum Thread: Secondary Laptop.. What to Do with It

Hey guys,

I'm currently using my alter Laptop, which is running Windows8.1 mainly on it (for work purposes...), but i still want to keep learning about Hacking. So, it is a Lenovo ThinkPad X201 with a 250GB SSD on it.

I was thinking about to use VirtualBox with some Kali/Linux VM's, but .. its not an optimal way. So, either Persistence USB stick or Dual-boot would be an option, or?

What would you guys do? Since it's having a SSD on it i more prefer dual-boot, but kali as a "main" OS? Dont know..

Thanks.

13 Responses

If I were you, I would install Kali as a second system. I myself have a laptop with Win 7 and Kali installed, and only use Windows for playing games, because Kali starts up much faster (30 seconds instead of several minutes) and it works well for stuff like web browsing.

Well, my Windows boots up in like 10-12 seconds.

Windows is mainly for Work, but not sure if i should install Linux on it for dual-boot. So, full time linux isnt an option. A dual boot is at least necessarry.

Why not? The only thing that's going to change is you will have to select system at boot, and your Windows partition will lose a few gigabytes.

Yeah.. you are right. Still have like 130 GB left for anything i want. But i'm not sure about if i should use Kali for it, since kali shouldnt be use for a main os?!

If you want to learn hacking, I think you should indeed use Kali. You don't have to uninstall Windows, if that's what you mean.

Didn't they say something about a Lenovo Thinkpad being a really good Linux laptop? If there is nothing important on there, just install Kali and make a dual boot on another drive partition

From the live USB tries it felt pretty good, for such "old" laptop and i think if its installed on a SSD its even more prettier.

Well the laptop is need for some customers to test connectivity and such and for derping around on work. I think a 70-80 GB partition for kali would be enough. And if i'm tired of it and want to go back full time windows or whatever, just repair MBR > done.

Yep, thats what i'm going to do. 70GB+ should be more than enough for it. Well, nothing important.. if i drive to a customer i carry my laptop with me, but to test various things i still can fire up windows to test the "basics".

Lenovo has a persistent backdoor that persists after a wipe built into the laptops. I got an extra i5 that runs like a champion with AC injection, I use as a football...

I personally run kali linux as a primary OS. In fact Kali is the only OS I have on my laptop. For me, it's because my laptop is too old and slow to run much of anything other than linux. It's a Dell Inspiron 600m. I believe that it dates back to 2003 or something. It's really just a matter of preference I guess.

I think a dual boot is the best choice on my small workstation. With a dual boot i will be able to use the "full power" of my machine, including the SSD, which will be a little boost aswell. On persistent USB i will miss the SSD "boost" and on a VM i cant even use the full power. So yeah.. dual boot seems to be the best choice.

Any website or torrent for downloading linux??

Yes there is lots, a simple google will provide you with results. Linux mint is one example.

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