Starter Tutorial

[spaceman927]

With the greatest apologies for being a 'noob,' I have never ran Linux before. I chose backbox for the friendly interface and program compatibility, without the seemingly Mac-lite features of straight Ubuntu. I wanted something easy to use, while having the ability to teach me the intricacies of the Linux OS.

However, what I do find lacking is a comprehensive forum sticky thread of how-to and beginning tutorial compilations. If you could provide what you believe to be the most helpful texts for the advanced novice Linux user (hopefully specific to backbox) it would be greatly appreciated. I know Linux is not the leviathan it was even five years ago, but my goal here is to learn the in's and out's of the OS to advance my skill set.

Not sure if it matters, but my specs are 2.66 gHz Pentium 4, 3.24 gb RAM, 64 mb GPU (integrated), and a gigabit LAN connection. I plan on upgrading from the motherboard up soon, but based on what I have, any estimates of what I could accomplish are always welcome.

[b4d_bl0ck]

Hi,
if you are new to Linux you will have some work to do.
First we have some general conditions here: http://forum.backbox.org/announcements/general-forum-conditions/
You can find lots of informations, guides, tutorials etc. on the web.
Reading will be your main activity for the next months  ;D
Since the field is too large it's difficult to suggest some particular places, but if you search around you'll find everything you need. You can start from Ubuntu and Debian guides/tutorials. Use the beautiful apropos and man commands in the terminal to get manual pages on a tool/system related stuff.
Find 3, 4,...,10,...,100 guides on a specific subject. The things you don't learn from one, you'll learn from the others...
Also please, be sure to have learnt the basics before switching to using bbox tools, or you will find some difficulties. Hopefully you'll read something before, let's say about networking, systems, attacks, some programming knowledge and so on.
BackBox doesn't have a book (yet), because it's an ubuntu based distro, and what you need is tools documentation, which are provided by the tools developers as man pages and/or online docs. For system admin tasks you can refer to Ubuntu documentation. But usually using a search engine is enough to get nice stuffs.

Hope you'll have fun! ;)
Bye!

[weVeg]

Hi spaceman927,
You didn't found how-to begin because bbox isn't for novice, this distro have specific application and you should not start from here. Also your spec doesn't allow you to perform nice experience... My advice (even b4d_bl0ck told you) is to read the manual and switch to another distro more adapt to your level... Try debian or xubuntu and enjoy with them!
Bye

[spaceman927]

Well I must apologize for not reading the forum rules before posting, I was a tad bit excited to get up and running, I just had a hope there would be a consensus favoured resource compilation. And while i may not have the skill level to utilize all BackBox features at the moment I chose this distro specifically because it's out of my skill level. If I wanted an easy OS I'd buy a mac ;)

[weVeg]

If I wanted an easy OS I'd buy a mac ;)

Absolutely no!! =)
Your choice is half right, I mean, be open source for ever...
You have just done the wrong choice of distro to start with! You have to begin with another open source OS and the next step is to use bbox, but now with your experience, you will only have the trouble, and asking here help is not smart! because you'll make simple question and so on...
hey, after all this is my opinion, you have to do what you want, that's clear, and you can go on using bbox!!
m2c

[spaceman927]

I understand the purpose built specific nature of backbox, I also understand that it will take at least a month before I feel comfortable TRYING to use it for what it was intended for. But I'd rather go the hard way and learn things right, I'm not exactly a get frustrated and quit guy. It seems that everything I'll need for a while is already on the forum, so I'll stay out of your way until I know what I'm talking about.

[b4d_bl0ck]

Yo, that's the right spirit! ;)
weVeg and me were saying that at first probably you won't need BackBox, since maybe you won't use its tools, and maybe you'll need most recent versions of softwares/drivers for a daily OS, so you can consider the idea of starting learning with a more "common" distro. But in the end BackBox is a modified Ubuntu (Xubuntu), so probably you won't notice any difference for your learning purposes.
Anyways we will not cover basic questions :)

Enjoy!

[weVeg]

nothing to say again....
Have a nice trip =)

ps:

so I'll stay out of your way until I know what I'm talking about

sometime put a little smile :) let us understand that you are friendly as we are =)

[sinflooddotnet]

Hi Spaceman,

I have a few suggestions for resources

On the underlying operating system

* comparison of (Pen)Testing Toolkits: BackBox & Kali Linux --> http://sinflood.net/?p=381
* ubuntu (operating system) forums/howto's --> http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Saucy  OR  http://ubuntuforums.org/

On using it's tools

* Tutorials in the howto's part of this forum
* Tutorial: Post-install configuration of BackBox Linux 3 --> http://sinflood.net/?p=104
* Tutorial: Exploit tutorial for beginners: Analysis & Exploitation --> http://sinflood.net/?p=283

Good luck!