So,
The question has been posed to me time after time. Why can't I just install Aircrack and run Ubuntu? Well, you can, if you have the right chipset in your wireless card then go for it. I just can't stand typing sudo before every command, and basically running and operating system that while is Linux. Is the closest thing you can get to windows, being a MacOSX on Steroids. Because that is what Ubuntu is. There isn't much you have to do with a command line that you can't do by just point ,clicking and shooting. Most people think they have to use apt-get install to get things in Backtrack instead of Sypaptics in Ubuntu, not true. You could just apt-get install sypnaptic. If you put an s after synaptic, it will fail as there is no such package. I use synaptic, just so I can see a variety of things and make sure there aren't any developers packages I can get, or if I want more than one tool to do something, but that's for simple tasks. I mean if I wanted to, yes I could download some fancy frontend for my programming (ANSI C) but, I don't. I use cc, and read what lines are messed up from there, and fix them myself instead of using bluefish or something and have the error just light up for me whenever I type it before compilation. But that's just me, because when you always have something pointing out syntax errors for you, you start forgetting the syntax itself. It's like autospell telling you when you spell something incorrectly, a few months of that and you start to depend on it for a lot of words where as if you had to remember how to use them daily you wouldn't have that problem. The main reason I would never choose Ubuntu over Backtrack for security testing is the other 500 or other tools that come with it, and I'm not just talking about metasploit framework and armitage. Now, there are quite a few other things that come in handy that are command line only besides simple things like macchanger. Now most people don't bother with these, well most of the people that aren't doing anything that requires intricate knowledge of a network anyways. If you've never sat and stared at a tcpdump window for more than 10 minutes, you probably have never done anything important or complicated enough to call yourself anything more than a little over a novice. And when I say a little, I mean just barely. But there is one thing neither operating system can do for you, that is write your own code. If you never use anything you write, or even modules that you've written. You have never done anything, not a thing besides use other peoples programs to do your work for you, unless you fully, and I do mean fully understand everythinig they do and how and why they work. If you did that, you'd have probably have written something of your own because you would want something taylored to your needs. Don't think so? Well you just keep telling yourself that until the Feds kick in your door because you used someone elses rootkit wrong and got yourself caught up in something a little bit bigger than you that you didn't quite understand =)
Joshua Hanselman
