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Offensive Security kicks of 2020 with the first release of their Kali Linux ethical hacking and penetration testing GNU/Linux distribution, Kali Linux 2020.1.
The Kali Linux 2020.1 release is now available for download and it looks like it packs quite some goodies for fans of the Debian-based operating system, including non-root by default. This means that Kali Linux 2020.1 is the first release to use a standard, unprivileged user account (kali/kali) by default instead of the superuser account (root/toor), except for the ARM images.
The second biggest change in Kali Linux 2020.1 is the availability of a single installer image for all supported desktop environments. Therefore, there won’t be separate images of Kali Linux for each desktop environment, which means that, when they want to install Kali Linux, users will have to download a single image and choose their preferred desktop environment.
Supported desktop environments include GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, MATE, and LXDE. Additionally, users will have more control over the tools that will be installed with their new Kali Linux OS. Live and network install images will still be available to download.
“We understand that Kali comes with more tools than some people use, or they have their own select tools they use. Now they can install Kali without any metapackages, giving them a bare Kali installation, so they can individually select what tools they want,” explains Offensive Security.
New tools, new themes, and Kali NetHunter updates
Kali Linux 2020.1 also introduces several new tools for your ethical hacking and penetration testing needs. Among these, we can mention cloud-enum, emailharvester, phpggc, sherlock, and splinter. On the other hand, tools that depend on the deprecated Python 2 will be removed from Kali Linux.
Light and Dark themes have been added as well for fans of the GNOME desktop environment, and new icons were added for the ever-growing collection of tools included in Kali Linux. Furthermore, the icons used in the applications menu were also replaced.
Kali NetHunter, the mobile version of Kali Linux, was updated as well with many goodies. For example, users are no longer required to root their phones to run Kali NetHunter, and there are now three editions available to download, NetHunter, NetHunter Light, and NetHunter Rootless.
While the NetHunter edition requires a rooted device with a patched kernel and custom recovery, the NetHunter Light edition can be deployed on rooted devices with custom recovery and no custom kernel. Lastly, NetHunter Rootless can be installed on all stock, unmodified devices using Termux.
You can download the Kali Linux 2020.1 release right for your favorite architecture using the link below. Since Kali Linux follows a rolling release mode, existing users need only to update their installations. Meanwhile, Offensive Security is working to bring you Kali Linux image for the Pinebook Pro laptop from PINE64.
Source and images: Kali Linux
Last updated 4 years ago
