When practicing hacking, you will be running other virtual machines as targets.It is safer to keep those sandboxed in a virtual environment.

You will be running and storing malicious scripts on your Kali instance, opening ports, running temporary webservers, etc.

Unless you are buying a laptop or desktop only for hacking, running it as a virtual machine is more convenient and less expensive.

You will not have to dedicate hardware to Kali.

That is not what Kali is primarily designed for. Regular daily-use operating systems should have a focus on tools like word processors, calendars, etc.

Kali is not designed to be a primary operating system for day-to-day use (a daily driver).

You certainly can run Kali as your main operating system, but there are a lot of reasons to stick with using it as a virtual machine. Due to its frequent updates, solid performance, and zero pricetag, it is often the go-to choice for home virtualization. VirtualBox is a free and open source hypervisor created by Oracle. So to put it all together, your host is running a hypervisor, which in turn is running a guest operating system. It will lend its physical resources, such as RAM, to the virtual machine. If you’re running it on a MacBook, the MacBook is the host. If you are running VirtualBox on a Windows Desktop, the Windows machine is the host. Host refers to the physical machine that is running the hypervisor. The virtual machine image is the operating system, the hypervisor is the digital equivalent of a physical computer.Ī hypervisor tells the virtual machine how much RAM and disk space it can borrow from your physical computer, handles the networking end, and allows communication with peripherals connected to the physical machine, such as keyboard, mouse, USB drives, and external network adapters. Three terms you will need to know are “hypervisor,” “host,” and “guest.”Ī hypervisor is a program that allows you to run a virtual machine. This new system (called a virtual machine) will respond to commands, run its own software, and access the internet as if it were its own physical machine.

Simply put, you are creating a nearly fully functioning computer within your current computer.

To understand what VirtualBox is, you need to understand virtualization. Virtualization allows an operating system to operate within a contained environment on top of your existing operating system. Why Run Kali in a Virtual Machine and Not as My Main OS?.

Download kali linux on virtualbox