Linux on SSD Experience?

[ZeferiniX]

To those who installed Linux OS on their SSD, how's your experience? Still did some lots of tweaks or just a simple installation of the OS? Is it even a good idea to install Linux on a SSD?

[Enderman]

There is no difference between an installing an OS on an SSD or a HDD

[qwertywarrior]

just install it

 

 

but like always

set it to AHCI in bios  (even for windows)

[ZeferiniX]

Depending on the filesystem, you can change a few flags in fstab and the I/O scheduler. In my case with Btrfs, I added noatime,ssd,discard,autodefrag.

 

Sorry I'm not fluent yet with Linux and I'm planning to install Linux Mint and learn what it's capable of before engaging to Pen Testing since most tools for Pen Testing are suited for Linux Systems and I have a question.

 

autodefrag? I thought you're not supposed to defrag a SSD @__@

[ZeferiniX]

No optimization or anything needed? Cuz I'm worried I might wear my SSD's write capabilities fast

[ZeferiniX]

You should not worry about a bit extra write to a SSD rated for hundreds of terabytes. Kali Linux would be more suitable for penetration testing than Mint.

 

Hmm actually I've been using BackTrack Linux for quite some time now until they switched to Kali Linux and I'm sick of not understanding what's happening behind it since I'm just using the tools. An experienced pen tester told me to study linux bash first and linux itself before dwelling in since a lot of command lines will be typed in the terminal while using pen testing tools and sure it's true. He advised me to go on basic distros first like Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian to study bash and among the three, I decided for Linux Mint.

 

I'm planning to get 2 128GB SSD for OS and Softwares. 1 for Windows and 1 for Linux. Did some calculation already and my softwares alone that I use often including the OS don't exceed 100GB.  I'll seperate entirely my documents and important files to a 2TB HDD. Will that do or should I go for 2 256GB SSD? Will the SSDs have problem if it's low in space?

[ZeferiniX]

Kali would work just as well in a VM with 16GB of storage with bridged networking and USB passthrough, with the exception of password cracking.

 

I'm into cryptography so I might need the exception

[ZeferiniX]

If you are using a VM, presumably you will be using Windows as your host in which case oclHashcat for GPU cracking would work better with Windows (unless you are clustering multiple machines).

 

Geez I only knew Aircrack until you pointed out that oclHashCat, still have a lot to learn What do you suggest for a beginner in Linux, just use a VM or dual boot?

[ZeferiniX]

VM. Using a CPU for WPA/WPA2 cracking is pretty futile as a laptop CPU will usually only get 1-3K passwords per second and ~5K with a desktop, compared to 150K/second with a single R9 280X. 

 

 

In most aspects aside from password cracking, VM > Dual Boot? I might as well ask a bit about VMs since you seem knowledgeable. I didn't bother dwelling with VMs back when I was learning the tools in backtrack though some of the people I met suggested to go for VM and yes I tried, but sadly my laptop just can't keep up since it seems to use lots of resources it would just stop responding. I'd be building a high-end rig by around December anyways so I might try VM. Putting that aside, since VM is a virtualized desktop and you pointed out that I can just allocate 16GB of storage, will that storage be deleted everytime I exit VM or can it be kept on a specified folder?

[ZeferiniX]

The storage will be a file saved on your host hard drive which you can expend and use thin provisioning.

 

Oic, seems like I won't be dual booting then as I'd like to be on the Windows Platform as much as possible cuz of some applications not working on linux and using Wine is quite a pain sometimes. Still watching the vid you included in your post, the topic sure is interesting. Thanks! I'll just get 1 256GB SSD then