If you use Linux you'll know that there are literally hundreds of so-called distros or distributions, each of which has a slightly different look and feel. With so many to choose from, it's downright confusing to know which one to try.

Thankfully, there are a handful of cases where your choice of distro is pretty obvious from the start, and one of those cases is for anyone who has an interest in computer security. Kali Linux is a distro which comes preinstalled with just about every security and hacking tool you could ever wish for, ready for you to start experimenting on your own network. It's the number one choice of operating system for just about every IT security professional who has an interest in examining the security of their own network and those of their customers too.

If you have an interest in the subject and you have a spare PC on your LAN, installing Kali (either on its own machine or just as a virtual machine using something like VirtualBox) can rapidly turn into an absorbing and fascinating exercise.

Last week, Kali Linux version 2.0 was released, which has scores of improvements as well as a new friendlier GUI. You can download it from https://www.kali.org/downloads/ as an ISO file that can be burned to a DVD (or used as the source for a VirtualBox machine creation). The file is around 3 GB, so be wary of downloading it if you're on a metered internet connection.

Remember, this is an entire replacement operating system so don't install it on your main PC or you'll lose everything else. If you install it on your main PC as a virtual machine, though, it will happily run in a window alongside your existing Windows installation and you won't lose anything.