This is a short review of BackTrack Beta
BackTrack is the newest and most updated distribution to date. It is built on a slax base by two well known security distribution teams. The writers of Auditor and WHAX ( Formely Whoppix ) came together to form one team, lucky for us. We now have an all encompassing distribution that will be hard to top.
As I go through BackTrack to write this review, I can't help but wonder, what doesn't it have? Well, I only found two things starting with learning tools. If you are new to security and want to learn how to use the tools which are at your disposal then you will have to start searching the net and reading man pages. This is kind of odd to me since the remote-expoit site has links to a number of great video tutorials. Other than learning tools, firefox has very few security related links which are present in some other distributions. Eyecandy is always a great addon for any distribution and helps make the overall presentation great. While KDE is loading there is a loading screen which is a hand print. As KDE loads, each finger of the handprint lights up. When using BackTrack you will notice that it also includes Vmware player. This shows that the team really went the extra step to bring new tools into the realm of live security distributions. BackTrack is run on slax using a KDE desktop which is the only environment that is offered. You will find many great options under the menu including the BackTrack section which links you to all the security tools. It also has another feature on the toolbar which is a quicklink to the available pentesting type tools. This section is a little different from the BackTrack section but contains many of the same tools. On top of having just about any tool you would need, everything is very up to date. This includes Firefox 1.5.0.1 and Nessus client 1.0.0RC 1 which is only 3 releases behind in a release candidate cycle. These are only two examples in the vastness of up to date tools.
The overall value of this great, especially because it is free. BackTrack gives you the quality of an expensive corporate package at open source project price (FREE). The knowledge that you can gain from learning all of the tools in BackTrack would be immense and well worth the time.
Currently, no other distribution compares to BackTrack. A few come close but fall short in certain aspects. Only time will tell what the other distribution developers decide to do and how to innovate to stay in the lead.
BackTrack is the newest breed of live security distribution. It will be interesting to see how the project evolves and how it stays ahead of others, or if it can. My final words are to tell you to go try it out and see how you like it. You won't be disappointed.
Positives
Best distribution we have seen to date.
Negatives
No learning material.