My objective was to install Kali Linux as my main OS on my laptop so that I could get used to using different interfaces and especially getting used to the Linux environment so that I can get into penetration testing.

The items you need to do this would be a laptop and a bootable usb install for Linux. Also you will need some knowledge of how to install an operating system.

The overall goal of this was to get my laptop setup with linux and get myself used to the tools and knowledge so that I can begin to practice. Kali linux is a very common distribution of Linux which comes with many of the tools you will need to begin penetration testing.

The actual steps I took to do this was to download a bootable usb and then check the md5sum of the download vs the check available so that I could make sure it was a safe verified installation. After that installing that to the usb so that I could boot to the usb and install the new OS. Formatting the hard drive and installing the fresh new copy of Linux onto the system took only a few moments. After that it was all exploring and beginning to learn.

Most of everything I learned to do this I had already known and the rest was learned from the Kali Linux site.