Using BackTrack as my main OS, good or bad idea?

[Jehjoa]

Hello everyone,

For a while now I have been considering to officially make the switch from Windows to Linux. I'm also getting more and more interested in the security field, and as such I recently stumbled upon BackTrack.

At first I wanted to install Ubuntu, but since BackTrack is based on that, would it be a good idea to use it for normal day to day stuff as well? Browsing the internet, watching a movie, playing some QuakeLive, etc?

And if it's not a bad idea, would I have to make a lot of changes to BackTrack to make it suitable for regular desktop use?

Thanks in advance for any insight on this.

[purehate]

Maybe you should read one of the 20 other threads where people have already asked this question. Not being able to use the search function is not a very good start for someone who wants to be involved in security work.

[halfdone]

Well I have been using windows for years, and half year age I hear about BT4, well at that time it was BT4 beta. After sing bt4 in vmware I started to use bt4 as my main opereting system in hdd install. I used bt4 for a month and then I installed Ubuntu. Now I have most of tools from BT4 installed on Ubuntu. You dont really need all of those apps in bt4.

There are some reasons why not use BT4 as main operating system. You are mainle using it as root (yes you can add normal user)
Bt4 is mainly for penetration testing.

Ubuntu 10.04 is more user friendly.

If you want to use BT4 as your main opereting system DON'T destroy your windows installation, in case you want to return. and after few months using bt4 try ubuntu. some thing are a lot easier in ubuntu.

[sickness]

Since BT4 came out I use it as main OS, runs like a charm.

[gunrunr]

depends on what you are expecting to do, i have a pen-test laptop with a hdd install for most work, another one with vmware player and bt4's vmachine, and my home computer runs vista 64 and vmware workstation, so i can practice on metasploitable, and a xp vm, and use it to create rainbow tables and crack stuff since its got sweet video cards. but i like gaming too so i can't just run bt4 as my main os.
if you are not going to use all or most of the goodies in bt4, like all the fun social engineering searches and SET, and you just want to experience linux, go with ubuntu and use a non root account so you don't kill your os by mistake.

[hhmatt]

If you have to ask this then I'd say no. I would only recommend it for highly experienced linux users.