Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for penetration testing or – yes – hacking. This one Debian-based Linux is a security officer’s favorite distribution. And now linodewhich was recently part of Akamaioffer Kali as a supported distribution†
Of Kali on Akamaiyou can test and secure your production systems. Akamai Linode Cloud is the first alternative cloud provider to partner with Kali Linux. That means, like Hillary Wilmoth, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Linode, you get “testing capabilities and configurations supported by Kali Linux as a standard distribution that is deployed to any compute instance or a Marketplace app that uses the Kali user interface and a full suite of contains tools.” †
For example, while you can add open-source penetration testing tools to any Linux distro, you must then manually set up and configure those tools as well. Kali comes with these tools already optimized and ready to use.
But what if you have specific needs for security tools? No problem. Thanks to Kali Linux Metapacks and it is well documented ISO Adjustment Processyou can generate an optimized version of Kali for your specific needs.
Thanks to the use of the lightweight XFCE desktop, you can also easily run a graphical desktop from your Linode cloud instance. That’s much harder to do with such resource-hungry Linux desktop interfaces as GNOME or KDE Plasma†
Linode is working with Kali on further documentation on how to best use their combination of cloud and Linux.
Kali Linux is now available as both a distribution and Marketplace app from Linode. How you want to implement is up to you. With Linode, you can use Kali as a regular lightweight Linux distro with a shell interface. But if you want the full Kali desktop and suite of security tools, you’ll need to deploy it through the Marketplace app. This includes Virtual Network Computers (VNC) as part of the installation. This creates a remote desktop for the Kali XFCE desktop.
To use Kali, Linode strongly recommends a subscription of at least 4 GB. A 4 GB Dedicated Linode cloud instance costs $30 US per month ($0.045/hr) and has good performance. The company also offers a 4GB shared plan for $20 per month ($0.03/hr). You can of course get more powerful ones, but you usually don’t need them for Kali. These calculation plans are available in all 11 of the company’s global data centerswith the same prices regardless of the region you choose.
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