Yup! Kali is a rolling distro built on Debian Testing, not Stable, annual releases. It can be used as a desktop OS, but still has pen testing and other security tools as their main focus
Please do! For stability's sake, I recommend installing a distro that follows an annual, stable release cycle such as Debian or Linux Mint. Mint famously has the required support for most hardware right out of the box, allowing for a easy experience.
you certainly make a good point, and replacing the hardware has definitely been a popular suggestion. fwiw, this MB Air was just a free hand-me-down, so I'm specifically using it to distro hop and fart around with different Linux distros on old Mac hardware that I have no attachment to
a common suggestion has been to replace the hardware. my intent here was just to shed some light on the fact that kernel updates frequently break modules like this one, which I suspect folks with more compatible hardware may not be as aware of. if you buy Linux-friendly hardware to begin with, Linux life is super chill. That's not always the case with old, hand-me-down hardware though.
that's a fair point I hadn't really considered. it's a kinda dumb reason to roll dual wifi hardware and I'd hate to give up one of only two usb ports, but that would technically solve my complaint. def worth considering!
I don't see much love for Debian Stable + KDE in this thread, but that's what I installed for my wife and she absolutely loves it. Don't underestimate the power of a "boring" but rock solid foundation specifically designed not to break. Users new to Linux migrating away from Windows often really appreciate that.
FWIW I've got the wife happily running Debian + KDE on her (formerly win10) laptop and she absolutely loves it. I just helped her upgrade from bookworm 12 to trixie 13 and all went smoothly, solidifying her approval.
I intend to get a Fairphone 5 or 6 and test-drive Ubuntu Touch on it, hoping to daily drive it... but it's all theoretical at this point. If I can't get a real Linux distro to do everything I want reliably, Lineage OS is my fallback plan. I believe in the Fairphone mission, so that'll be my next hardware purchase either way
I'm seeing a growing trend where a dev's core repo moves to a new platform, but leaves a mirror on github with a link to the main repo. I love this solution.
qemu vm. I really wanna run this with the first fairphone to become readily available in US (fp6 i assume) but there's still a ways to go...