WLANs are extremely popular. A wireless LAN is flexible and easy to set up, and the current standards see wireless networks achieving data transfer rates that were the domain of wired LANs until a few years ago. A misconfigured WLAN, however, can open up the floodgates to attackers, so a close look at the configuration is definitely worthwhile. The Wifislax Linux distribution comes with a preinstalled collection of the best WiFi security tools.

Live Application

Wifislax [1] boots to a GRUB screen in Spanish. If you do not speak Spanish, first go to the Change to English menus entry to make things a little easier. You now have to choose one of two kernel versions: The Run with 486 kernel option is recommended for older hardware. If the computer uses a modern multicore CPU, you can select the Run with SMP kernel option. GRUB does not start the actual operating system immediately afterwards but instead provides various desktops (KDE and XFCE) in another screen and secure modes without ACPI, X Server, or with VESA graphics driver. The actual system only starts after you select one of these options.

At first glance, the Wifislax desktop menu structure does not have any special features other than the subgroups Wifislax and Updaters. However, on closer inspection of the submenus, it becomes apparent that the developers dropped all the ballast from the operating system that does not contribute to the distribution's actual focus. In other words, GIMP, LibreOffice, and Thunderbird, along with other standard programs, are missing from the multimedia sector. Major online applications such as email clients, instant messaging clients, and messenger services have also been removed. However, the scope of programs varies depending on your work environment: KDE integrates some of its many desktop-specific programs, which are completely missing under XFCE.

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