What should we do about Kali Linux questions?

Question

It's well-known that we have a quality problem in the kali-linux tag. Some statistics corroborate this perception (though not to the extent that I'd expected):

• 16.4% of the kali-linux questions have a negative score, compared with 3% for the site as a whole.
• 39.6% of the kali-linux questions have a score ≤ 0, compared with 27% for the site as a whole.
• 21.9% have no answer, compared with 15.8% for the site as a whole.
• 21.9% of non-closed question have no answer, compared with 15.6% for the site as a whole.
• 7% are closed (excluding duplicates), compared with 3.5% for the site as a whole.
• 2.4% are closed as duplicates, compared with 4.2% for the site as a whole.

There isn't a flood of Kali questions, mind you. About 1.3% of the recently asked questions are kali-linux (that's the rate for 2017 as a whole as well as for August and for September, rounded to the nearest 0.1%), excluding deleted questions (can a mod please edit in figures that account for deleted questions?).

In chat, several regulars have said that they largely ignore Kali questions. (Personally, I don't ignore the tag, but I tend to skip the questions without reading them.) It seems that many Kali questions are a bad thing for answerers. And I suspect that they're also a bad thing for askers, because all too often, we aren't helping them.

What should we do about Kali questions?

Answer 1

We've often talked in the chat about having a “reference question” telling people not to use Kali Linux. Well, here's my proposal. Edits welcome, but please keep the gist unless we decide on meta that this isn't the advice we want to give as a community.

Note that I do not propose systematically closing Kali questions! Each question should be judged on its merit. But when people are clearly in way over their head and they've asked a question with the usual novice problems (unclear because they didn't explain what they were doing, they didn't copy-paste error messages, they didn't provide relevant information about their system, etc.), we could close it as a duplicate of this advice-giving question rather than letting the question rot with zero answers and zero comments or closing it as unclear.

Answer 2

Listening to my fellow networking security classmates from years back, when it was still called BackTrack Linux, I can fully understand this phenomenon. It's somewhat anecdotal, but Kali Linux is seen as the "Swiss army knife" of Linux, and if you haven't installed it yet you aren't cool.

Meanwhile I had been using Debian for years, and around that time was learning how to use Arch Linux. The types of people interested in it expect it to unlock the powers of jujitsu without any rigor of actually understanding Linux. It was like the secret to becoming a nerd quickly without all the fuss.

To that end it may not be particularly useful to tell such askers not to use Kali.. because they want to (say they) use Kali. We'd be better off making "Kali - Script Kiddies Edition" with a Ubuntu installer.

I think to some degree this is the nature of this userbase and simply put fewer of those questions will get answered. I do not think there should be any special response to questions that simply aren't researched or well written. Those should be handled like any other question that isn't well written.

On the other hand there's a special place in my heart for Linux noobs and those newly interested in Linux and I tend to pick up on questions that are simply misinformed rather than poorly written. I do believe that Kali is a vector for getting people interested in Linux as a whole. So that again argues for not telling all these users "your question is irrelevant you were wrong the moment you decided to use Kali Linux."

I think a three step filter should be applied:

1. If the question isn't well researched, close it.
2. If Kali isn't being used for its intended purpose, refer to Gilles answer.
3. If the user is struggling because they are in over their head, then here we need to question the purpose of this site.

If this site is to help all users of Linux and Unix do what they want to, then we should just try our best to answer those questions. If we want to be more like teachers or guides then we should point such users away from Kali and toward a more suitable Linux distribution first. The latter might be hard considering that many Kali users use it because of the name alone.

(I'm new to this site and to Meta. But I figured I'd participate since I have somewhat unique knowledge on the subject.)

Answer 3

What should we do about Kali questions?

I think we should treat them just like questions for any other distribution, perhaps with extra warnings in the tag excerpt and wiki. Just a quick reminder that we voted to allow Kali questions as on-topic here (pushed over from Ask Ubuntu), given that they applied the Kali tag. I try to re-tag questions that "forget" to include the tag.

We have the occasional "good" (not close-worthy) Kali question; it could receive answers just like any other good question. The fact that the tag is ignored by high-rep users is an unfortunate side effect of the poor Kali questions.

If we (and we do!) get poor questions, then they should be downvoted and/or closed as unclear, just like any other Stack Exchange question.

I can imagine two categories of poor Kali questions:

1. "I can't play $GAME on my fourth monitor" -- using Kali for its unintended purposes.

2. "I tried to follow these instructions but it didn't work" -- using Kali for its intended purposes, but leaving out key details.

I see the existing answer as a possible close-target for the first type, although I still feel weird telling someone that the answer to "X" is "don't do X". A part of me would almost feel better leaving such a question unanswered (despite my desire to provide answers in general), as it's a flag to future askers that perhaps such a thing is not possible.

Certainly the second category deserves the normal VTC as unclear; and if the person comes back with elaboration to the point of being answerable, then I don't think we should close it as "don't do that" a duplicate.

I suppose what I'm talking myself into here is caution in closing every new Kali question as a duplicate of "don't use Kali"; rather, only questions that are clearly deviating from the "normal" Kali usage.

It's also my opinion that we could add some extra verbiage to the tag (in the hopes that anyone reads it) that warns askers that we expect a higher level of expertise to show through in their questions, given that they're using a special purpose-built distribution. Much of the existing answer could be extended into the tag's wiki.

Answer 4

IMO the flood of questions is not being per se about kali questions; it is just that a large number of questions about kali are badly formed, and most are a rush job from inexperienced users/people with bad work ethics.

Most are just inexperienced users not wanting to invest time in investigating the OS, and furthermore not wanting to take time writing a proper answer (or often not even wanting to lose time with requests for improving the question). They also seem to have unrealistic expectations wanting/hoping to have the maximum return/investment of time in an answer from elements of our community.

I also do not quite understand why is it that kali attracts so many users of that kind. Is it a regional thing? Without having access to the country of the OP, we cannot tell.

What it also must surely be, is people using it as a framework in security course/hacking tutorials, and not having the tools/background to further customise kali, and then wanting quick answers without investing time.

As far as I can tell, the kali/TP-Link/realtek flood of bad questions could be more of a symptom than a cause. Contrary to other forums, there is very little investment on creating new users/posting questions here, for better or for worse. For instance, I have come across forums where you have a 24h cooling off period when creating a new user.

That said, a reference question to point when needing to close kali questions for being out of topic seems a brilliant idea.

Answer 5

I stand ready to be flamed for this but here goes........

First of all I need to say I agree with @Gilles post Why is Kali....etc but I think something is missing.

It seems true that many of the 'poor quality' Kali questions come from new Linux users who are quite simply out of their depth. They've seen a cool movie or something about 'hacking' and think its as simple as

1. Install Kali,
2. Type msfconsole
3. Take over the world.

Naive to say the least, but the thing that I get from this is that new (or current Windows) users have been motivated to try Linux by the apparent potential of the tools bundled with Kali.

What I get from some of the (on occasion slightly toxic) reactions I see posted to admittedly poor Kali questions, is that these potential Linux users are going turn away because of a frosty reception and drift back to the Windows herd.

Mooooooo.

If these people came to Linux because one of our distros has been made more 'glamorous' by virtue of the potential of the tools it contains then shouldn't we use that to draw them in to our loving community for keeps?

For what it's worth my version of @Gilles post would be short, sweet and along these lines......

If you are inexperienced with Linux and are installing Kali in order to use the tools it contains then you may find it a complex and difficult task with little support for inexperienced users among the relatively small (and mostly professional) Kali user base.

If this applies to you then you will find it easier to install another Debian distribution (such as Ubuntu) and then follow the existing posts, tutorials and queries on the appropriate forums (again, such as Ask Ubuntu) which will help you install and learn to use the main Kali tools (airmon, jtr, crunch, hashcat, nmap/zenmap, metasploit, armitage etc) in an easier to use environment.

Once you have gained experience in using Linux then you will be in a better position to perform a full Kali install, if you need to.

Put them back in their depth, in a place they will find the help they need but keep the motivation alive.

The fact of the matter is that most of these users will find that using Kali tools to 'hack' is not as easy as they think and will very quickly tire of trying to brute force a 16 random character WPA2 hash to get onto the neighbours' wi-fi.

When they do give up, old Mr & Mrs Jones next door will be safe again; the NSA can move their van from the street outside; dreams of a server with the new Silk Road site in the spare room have evaporated in the cold light of day; but they will be left with a functional Linux system and opt to stay with us.

That's what I would like to do with the people who ask poor quality Kali questions.

Answer 6

The underlying premise of most objections to Kali questions seems to be that a user should (or must) first become adept at coping with bootup troubles from balky graphics cards on a stripped-down Debian, (i.e. Kali Linux), before they can use this dangerous power tool or maybe they'll break the internet because they can't even set up a graphics card.

But hardware graphics and computer networks are separate specialties that employ different skillsets:

• A user who's bad at hardware graphics might have a knack for for networking, and might help fix the internet even though they can't set up a graphics card.

• A user skilled at setting up hardware graphics might have no talent for networking, and might be botching things left and right -- and playing the role of gatekeeper to boot, locking out people who might be able to help them.