I went looking for Radical Edward wallpapers for my pen-testing virtual machine (VM) earlier. I was supposed to be working through a cybersecurity certification course, but damn did I need a solid distraction after staring at the screen for a couple of hours, completing module after module. I figured Radical Edward would make the perfect background. Also, I wanted a way to easily tell what machine I was booting into, so I didn’t mistakenly drop into my development VM when I meant to do some hacking, especially because I run Kali Linux on both machines.
Ever since I learned how to manage VMs, I’ve been using them for everything. I have a VM each for coding, for hacking, and for handling files of unknown origin. I’m fucking glad about it too. There’s been a trend lately of developers having their machines taken over as a result of downloading and installing proprietary development software as part of coding interviews. Furthermore, new projects are constantly popping up and scammers love to hang out in devs’ DMs on social media in an attempt to coax the dev over to their illicit project with the shiny new façade.
Here’s a pro tip: never do work for free as part of an interview. Also, never compromise SECURITY for convenience.
Now, I really have no desire to pick up a programming gig at a corporate office. To me, that sounds exceptionally boring. I have, however, enjoyed working with various start-ups and protocols. And even when I was familiar with the team, or I was in charge of the software development directly, I still did all of my work in my coding VM. You just never know when something might go wrong and you end up having to gut your whole system.
For you JS developers: have you ever done a complete uninstall of Node.js? That shit is insidious. It’s not enough to drop the fucking app in your trash bin or use the uninstaller. Nooooo, you have to dig into your operating system’s bins and clear out the residual mess it leaves in order to uninstall it properly. Most development tools are like that. Do I want that on my host system?
Fuck no.
I chat on Discord and run Ableton Live on my host system. I do everything else in a VM. If you’re curious, or want to dive into this shit, here’s the start of a thread where I discuss the what, the why, and the how of virtual machines.
Anyway, I found this wallpaper during my earlier search and added the Cowboy Bebop text behind Edward because I thought it looked cool:
