How to install kali linux 2.0 in vmware

Kali Linux

Kali Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at advanced Penetration Testing and Security Auditing. Kali contains several hundred tools which are geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering.

What is VMWare Workstation

VMware Workstation is a hosted hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems (an x86 version of earlier releases was available); it enables users to set up virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical machine, and use them simultaneously along with the actual machine.

What's new in Kali 2.0?

Updated Kernel (4.0)

Various Desktop environments support (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, mate, e17, lxde, i3wm)

Frequent upstream updates

Improved Hardware and Wireless support

And of course, the lot of new tools added

Hardware Requirements of Kali 2.0

A minimum of 10 GB disk space for the Kali Linux install.

For i386 and amd64 architectures, a minimum of 512MB RAM.

CD-DVD Drive / USB boot support

How to download Kali 2.0?

Kali 2.0 is named as Sana, This is the most advanced penetration testing platform we have ever made. And the good news is that it's available in 32 bit, 64 bit, and ARM flavors, as well as a number of specialized, builds for many popular hardware platforms.

Below links will take you to the official download pages of Kali Linux.

To download Kali ISOs - Here

VMWare Images of Kali - Here

How to install Kali 2.0 Step by Step?

In this post, I used Vmware workstation 11 to demonstrate the installation of Kali 2.0. Below steps will guide you to create a VM in Vmware. In case if you are going install it on your base machine or if you know already how to create a VM in VMware workstation, you can skip this step and continue with the Kali installation.

Step 1

Open Vmware workstation software, And click Create New Virtual Machine. Typical is selected by default, Click Next.

Step 2

Next, you will be asked to select the ISO file, click browse window & select the downloaded ISO file.

Step 3

Select the Guest Operating System type as Linux & let version to be Debian 6.

Step 4

Give a proper name to your Virtual Machine, And it in a location where you have at least 10GB free. I have named mine as Sana, A cool one isn't it?

Step 5

Give the maximum disk space that you are going to allocate for this VM, 20GB would be sufficient in my opinion. I recommend storing the VMDK file as a single file since it would be easier to move and to convert to other formats.

Step 6

Click on Customize Hardware & Change your RAM, CPU and Network adapter settings if you want to.

Kali Installation

Once your VM is created, you can power up the machine. You will see the below screen as soon as you start your VM,

In this post, I am going to be using the most common Install Method. Press enter once you have selected your option.

Select your language and location & Keyboard as depicted in the below pictures,

Next step is to configure the network, refer snapshots below and configure accordingly.

All the above settings can be changed anytime. So don't worry if you do not have a default gateway or a DNS server, Just give some value & later you can change them as you wish.

Configure your hostname and root password.