EH-Net

Just curious to see what your home office is like?  I'm doing some umm Fall cleaning, backed up everything and formatted both of my desktop's to a clean slate.  I'm always trying to use Linux as my main OS but each time I begin to use it, there's some crazy problem that kicks my ass.  (ie. everyday at some point, the buttons on my mouse will stop working.  no left or right click. try multiple mice and same issue)

I'm thinking of having my test/lab PC dual boot Ubuntu 11.04 with Backtrack 5 R1 and have my home desktop dual boot Linux Mint 11 with Win 7.

What are you guys running on your home desktops?

Thanks! :-)

work laptop ubuntu 11.04
desktop windows 7 with vmware of all sorts windows.backtrack,linux so on

Glacier - Old PIII desktop running Debian testing with XFCE.
Nan-Madol - Old PIII (not as old as Glacier) running Debian testing with XCFE but mostly used for cli.

Whistler - IBM Thinkpad t60 with a processor and memory upgrade. Currently runs Debian Testing, with Virtual Box.
VM Backtrack4r2, Backtrack3, Ubuntu 10.04, 2 Windows XP. They're not usually all ran at the same time.

ipad-wifi - EeePC netbook running tripple boot, Backtrack 4r2, Ubutntu 11.04, and Windows 7.

Solaris, OpenBSD, OSX, Windows7, XP,, Linux Mint

Win7, WinXP, Fedora 15, Ubuntu 10.04

Win7, backtrack 5, SL, Centos, Fedora

Windows 7 on my work PC and laptop (unfortunately it's company policy).
Windows at home too (because my daughters computer classes are all on Windows/MS Office so they need a Windows system for home work).
I've installed Backtrack on VMware on all my work and home systems though just in case I need a *nix unit to check things.
At work I work mostly on Linux systems (Slackware, RHEL, CentOS and some custom made kernels) which I just connect to via SecureCRT or PuTTY.

Win 7 with VMware with other os
Backtrack 5 on my laptop

openSuSE 11 on my primary, Win 7 on my secondary, both with either VMWare or VirtualBox on them for attack lab and pentest situations.  VMWare ESXi on an HP DL380 G3 with 16 GB RAM for extra VM's.

Then wife and kids still have XP for school-required stuff.

Another question might be what OS are the most common when doing pen test?

Primary workstation running dual-boot with Win7 and Ubuntu. Server running Ubuntu. Pen-testing done from BT5 R1 running in VMWare, targets used are also run in VMWare.

Server 2008, Windows7x2, Qimo (for kids), XPx2, CentOSx3 (my preferred home server OS), Mythbuntu, BT5x2, Samurai-WTF, Ubuntu, pfSense, DD-WRT are all physical installs and then run a variety of VM's on ESXi and VMware WS7 including most of these as well as x86 Solaris, Fedora, Security Onion and whatever else I happen to be working on at the time. Also have 4 different Android devices. My everyday PC runs Win7 Pro but I switch back and forth to my Ubuntu box so frequently it's more of a 60/40 split.

For my base pentest box I use BT5 (heavily customized) w/Win7 VM (sometimes you need a Windows machine) and also a Win2000 VM (sometimes you need a box that works well within natively insecure environments) + a BT5 VPS in Belgium. I also use Samurai-WTF for web based work when I don't want to deal with all the BT5 cruft.

I really need to spend more time with *BSD, the limited exposure on my pfSense box is not sufficient to make me feel comfortable with the OS yet. I also really need to learn more about Mac and Apple products in general. I'm ashamed to say I have not used an Apple product since the IIe.

Win 7 Ult on primary desktop with VMs of just about everything for personal use, but also dual boot to a "clean" win 7 build for EnCase work.  Work laptop #1 is Ubuntu 11.04 with the corporate win 7 image running in a VM. (suck it IT support)  Work laptop #2 I physically trade drives out as either BT5R2 or SANS SIFT.  Home server #1 is Ubu 11.04 with a variety of VMs for attack/pen testing, and it also hosts all my rainbow tables.  Home server #2 is also ubu 11.04 but mainly used for cli forensic needs and mass storage for forensic images.  Old AMD Athlon 4000 based tower is my pfsense firewall and VPN solution for remote access, proxy, and IDS.  Not going into detail on random other laptops, maxIpads, and droids.

Pretty much all of my machines dual boot Windows 7 and Fedora 15. I have a variety of USB flash drives with different LiveCDs that I use regularly. A multitude of Virtual Machines that I use regularly as well.

Edit: I hate Gnome 3, I always install Fedora with xfce. Not sure if that makes much difference to you.

That's awesome guys.  Now I'm getting a good feel for what your systems look like at home.  Looks like most all of you run Win7 as your primary OS (or dual booting it with Ubuntu or Fedora).  I usually have only had 1 main home desktop and laptop but just a week ago, my dad gave me his "old" one which is a Dell XPS P4 3.3Ghz dual core, 250GB hdd and 3GB RAM.  I imagine if you have more than 1 home desktop, it would be wise to seperate your everyday home PC from your pen-testing/lab PC? 

Out of the dozen or so OS replies, I've only seen 1 mention of Linux Mint.  Even with Unity, it seems Ubuntu still has the upper hand over mint. 

My setup looks to be about the same as Engan's with dual booting Win7 & Ubuntu on one box and pen-testing from BT5 in a virual machine. 

Since you brought it up, Jamie, I'll go ahead and ask which OS is the most common when doing pen-testing?  (or better yet, what "setup" on your system is the most common)  I'm thinking of having either 1 main OS of Ubuntu on my pen-testing box with virtual machines of BT5 (attacker) and WinXP/2K (victims).  Or if I have the hdd space, maybe it would be better to actually install BT5 on the pen-test box dual booting Ubuntu.

You always want to isolate your pentest box from other systems. Thats customer data that you are likely contractually obligated to protect. I get very angry when I see how pentesters we hire are so careless with my orgs data. It's irresponsible and in my opinion, criminally negligent.

I'd speak more to this topic but it's a bit of a threadjack and I've submitted a talk to an upcoming hacker conference that I don't want to spoil. ;)

Sorry if there was some confusion but this is just my pen-test lab which I use to learn from.  I have no customers or a professional pen-test job so it's only my own info. 

p0et,

On my second laptop I had backtrack 5 as my sole OS but within the last month, I made SL my OS and only use backtrack through VMware. Thats only because I'm practicing for RHCSA. I say its completely up to you if you want to dual-boot it or not. When I was using backtrack on a daily basis, I had it dual-booted.

So I think I'll stick with dual booting Win7 & Linux Mint on my main home PC (use it for everyday stuff and infosec research).   I have some good ideas now of what to put on my 2nd desktop for pen-testing labs (learning ethical hacking) but what do you guys suggest?  It's a P4 dual core 3.2Ghz with 250GB hdd and 3.2GB ram.  I'm thinking I should probably dual boot this with Win7 and a linux distro so I can use either Windows or Linux to attack from and have VM's inside each of those OS's.  (possibly have backtrack & win7 for dual boot or just have Win7 in a VM then just dual boot Ubuntu with BT5 or even don't dual boot and just have either Ubuntu OR BT5 as the one main OS) 

So many options. :-)

Work is XP, Wife's home is Win7, the geek lab has Fedora, BT5, Ubuntu 11.04, and of course every flavor of VM you can download from vmplanet.net