What is a “Virtual Machine”? Virtual machines are self-explanatory, a non-physical “virtual” computer inside of your own computer. This allows us to safely contain an operating system (the “guest operating system” or “guest”) inside your computer (the “host operating system” or “host”).
It goes without saying that supporting a second computer inside of your own computer is going to require some resources. For our purposes, we will be using Kali Linux, a cybersecurity-focused Linux operating system with a wide-variety of tools. Kali Linux requires as a bare-minimum 2 Gigabytes of RAM and 20 Gigabytes of storage space (3GB for the zipped installation file, typically 15-20GB after extraction), and a decent processor with at least 4 cores (see below).
MacOS Note: Apple M1, M2, and M3 chips run ARM, which is a different CPU architecture versus x86. Most computers you are familiar, with CPUs made by Intel and AMD with run x86 (32-bit) or x86-64 (64-bit). This tutorial assumes you are running x86, and we’ll get to an ARM tutorial eventually. Just ask for help in the meanwhile.
7-Zip is a free and open-source compression and extraction archiver which does not constantly ask you to buy their software, unlike some applications. Kali Linux provides their operating system in the .7z format, and Windows File Explorer does not support extracting 7zip files.
How to check…
On Windows:
Performance > CPU and look for Virtualization: Enabled/Disabled. If it is enabled, you may go right ahead to the installation.
On MacOS:
sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu.features in your macOS terminal, and look for “VMX” in the list