Kali Linux Release Aftermath

Five days into the Kali Linux release at BlackHat EU in Amsterdam, and we’re still not fully recovered. Since the release, we’ve had just over 90,000 downloads, a dozen or so package updates, added more articles to the Kali Documentation, started a Portuguese translation, and we even managed to squeeze in a small bugfix release (Kali 1.0.1), which resolved an annoying USB keyboard issue some users reported. The responses to Kali so far have been extremely positive and our bug tracker is surely enough filling up with new tool requests. We encourage Open-source tool developers to contact us so that we can work together towards this goal.

We have big hopes for our shiny “Kali Linux Documentation” platform and will continue writing up useful articles that serve the Kali community. We have made the effort to automatically generate a PDF offline version of our server for public download (Removed in 2021). We strongly recommend that even experienced Linux and BackTrack users take the time to read through this documentation, as Kali Linux has some unique features which would throw off anyone without a proper understanding of the underlying mechanisms. PDF downloads for additional translated languages will become available soon as translation work speeds ahead.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the past year’s development of Kali Linux - developers, funders, programmers, web designers, translators, community administrators, mirror contributors, and tech writers, without whom Kali Linux would not have come to light. Extra special thanks to the OffSec team who have dedicated themselves to Kali Linux in the past year and to Rapid 7 for supporting our release and officially contributing the Metasploit packages to Kali Linux.

We will continue to be responsive to the community through our formal channels, and in turn, hope that through this new interaction, the community will help grow, and continually improve, Kali Linux.