I generally use Linux-based OSs. Currently I am using Fedora Linux primarily because it supports drivers for my video card pretty smoothly. I use it to do all my implementations, etc.
When doing penetration testing exercises I usually use Kali Linux or Pentoo, which already comes with the many tools I need. BTW, Kali categorizes the tools it provides according to the stages of penetration testing i.e., the tools you would use for reconaissance, scanning, etc.
Do you have any preferred OS to do your security work on by any chance?
Since you asked and seem to be interested in distro-hopping, I've done a bit of that myself over the past decade ...
General Purpose: Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Sabayon -> OpenSUSE -> Fedora -> ArchLinux
Specialized: Knoppix -> Backtrack -> Puppy Linux -> Maemo -> Debian + ipkg -> ArchLinux ARM
My biggest issue with Backtrack (now Kali) is that the GUI session is running as root, which is really bad OpSec. For this reason, I personally prefer to "roll my own" specialized distros. Pentoo is essentially just an overlay repo for Gentoo. There is also BlackArch repo for ArchLinux. Both are available as preconfigured LiveCDs, however it's easy enough to use an existing Gentoo or Arch install and tailor it to your needs.
Those two distros also make it fairly straight forward to compile a kernel with patches, which was necessary for awhile to get monitor mode working (the channel -1 bug). I've been using Arch on all my machines for the past 4 years and have it on my RPis as well. The AUR is the biggest asset for Arch, it's superior to PPAs (Debian/Ubuntu), and Overlays (Gentoo).
In my opinion, I've found Fedora to be bloated, that packages tend to be outdated unless running Rawhide ("bleeding edge"), that yum is not a great package manager, RPM .spec files are frustrating to make, and the official repository is very sparse. However, DNF has replaced yum, RPMfusion repo mitigates the lack of packages (especially for things like Nvidia's proprietary GPU drivers) and the new Fedora Copr user repos (similar to PPAs) should help a lot.
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Since you asked and seem to be interested in distro-hopping, I've done a bit of that myself over the past decade ...
General Purpose: Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Sabayon -> OpenSUSE -> Fedora -> ArchLinux
Specialized: Knoppix -> Backtrack -> Puppy Linux -> Maemo -> Debian + ipkg -> ArchLinux ARM
My biggest issue with Backtrack (now Kali) is that the GUI session is running as root, which is really bad OpSec. For this reason, I personally prefer to "roll my own" specialized distros. Pentoo is essentially just an overlay repo for Gentoo. There is also BlackArch repo for ArchLinux. Both are available as preconfigured LiveCDs, however it's easy enough to use an existing Gentoo or Arch install and tailor it to your needs.
Those two distros also make it fairly straight forward to compile a kernel with patches, which was necessary for awhile to get monitor mode working (the channel -1 bug). I've been using Arch on all my machines for the past 4 years and have it on my RPis as well. The AUR is the biggest asset for Arch, it's superior to PPAs (Debian/Ubuntu), and Overlays (Gentoo).
In my opinion, I've found Fedora to be bloated, that packages tend to be outdated unless running Rawhide ("bleeding edge"), that yum is not a great package manager, RPM .spec files are frustrating to make, and the official repository is very sparse. However, DNF has replaced yum, RPMfusion repo mitigates the lack of packages (especially for things like Nvidia's proprietary GPU drivers) and the new Fedora Copr user repos (similar to PPAs) should help a lot.