KaliBook

OS : Kali Linux

Host : Macbook Air 7,2

Key Points

• Apple makes some of the nicest laptops available but couples them with an OS that is very hard to customize. It would be nice if we could have a MacBook running macOS along with a Linux distro. With newer laptops that have the T1/T2 security chip, it becomes almost impossible to efficiently run Linux. The battery performance is sub-par and there can be infrequent crashes every now and then.

• Overview of the current state of support for Linux on mac.

• With recent kernel upgrades, the MacBooks without the TouchBar now have complete support in the Linux kernel. This makes the MacBook Air 7,2 a unique machine. It's old enough that it is now well supported.

• Kali Linux has introduced significant changes going into 2020. The default root user nature of previous versions of Kali made it unsuitable for daily use. They have introduced a new theme based on Gnome, and most importantly the default user is no longer root.

• Kali in live mode will be running as user kali password kali. No more root/toor.

• Another interesting thing of note is that the default kernel has no out of the box support for Wi-Fi which requires the broadcom driver, so it's best if the MacBook can be connected to the internet via USB tethering or USB to Ehernet before installation begins.

Cheatsheet

• MUST READ! Excellent pages with lots of information on the whole procedure.

  1. Official Kali Linux docs
  2. LifeWire - How to Install and Dual Boot Linux and macOS

• Use cmd+R to boot into recovery. Choose utilities and use following commands to change System Integrity Protection or SIP.

    csrutil disable //to disable SIP
    csrutil enable  //to enable SIP again
    csrutil status  //to check SIP status
  

• rEFInd is a boot manager for EFI and UEFI computers. Installing rEFInd.

• Hold alt/option key on startup for boot menu.

• Default Kali repos.

    sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
  

  Add Kali Regular repositories

    deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib
  

  Ctrl+X : quit nano
  Enter : to save

• Initializing Xorg display server manually.

    sudo nano ~/.xinitrc
  

  Add i3 or gdm

    exec i3 // or exec gdm
  

  Then run following command from Terminal

    startx
  

• Switching desktop environment.
  For xfce + i3 setup:
  install xfce

    sudo apt-get install kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base xfce4 xfce4-places-plugin xfce4-goodies
  

  install i3

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install i3
  

  For Gnome:

    sudo apt-get install gnome-core kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base
  

• Configure network from command line.

    nmcli connection
  

• Adding Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers.

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install linux-image-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') broadcom-sta-dkms
    sudo modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac bcma
    sudo modprobe wl
  

  OR

  I have included an install.sh script in this repo. Open terminal at download location of the script and run as follows:

    sudo sh ./install.sh
  

• Install zsh and configure with oh-my-zh.

• System Information.

    neofetch