Totally false. Kali isn't particularly insecure by any measure, but your friend is essentially saying that a cannon would make a good shield. Properly setup VMs are nice in the sense that you can turn them off and restart them at the first sign of trouble, but they're certainly not invulnerable. They're mostly safer in the sense that there's less long-term damage and downtime from running VMs versus a traditional system that may require a complete reinstall after a compromise. That said, Kali and any other Linux system are more than capable of sandboxing against extremely aggressive attacks, but Kali's not particularly designed for such behavior, as it's usually the attacker, not the the victim. Put Kali on a USB and use it for its intended purpose of pentesting, and use a more defensive Linux distribution for your personal system. More on reddit.com

You can get every Kali Linux iso file for free on the official website. More on reddit.com

Rather than just randomly rant about your thoughts on the matter can you point us "noobs" to some useful information, tools, or training to learn to work with Kali/linux? Your post just seems to be a bitching moment with nothing of substance to help advance the community. What are the basics in Kali/linux that you suggest learning before building to tails? It's an immature shame when people act as gatekeepers while simultaneously bitching about the lack of knowledge within a community. Without offering anything of merit to help the community, your post, and yourself in this manner are being very "noob". More on reddit.com

Hard to troubleshoot this setup because the VM image should be a sort of "no brainer." Have you tried the VMware image with VMware Workstation ? Check the Kali Linux downloads page for the link to their prepared Kali VMware images . The image is packed with 7-Zip , which will also need installed. Choose a location for the VM files and right-click on the downloaded image, then choose 7-Zip > Extract Here. After the VM files are unpacked, launch VMware Workstation and at the main menu choose "Open a Virtual Machine". Navigate to the folder where the files were unpacked, and select the .vmx file. Select the VM and launch. If that works, go and be merry. If not, check back and we will likely have to get into details for what your device is to hunt down an unusual conflict. Also, have you run other virtual machines? In a case like this is it's worth verifying basic opportunity to install and run any VM. For example, could do an Ubuntu Desktop install and see how that compares. Those usually require to boot from ISO. So if that works, and neither Kali VM image has, you will also have learned the skills to retry with a standard Kali image. The ISO method requires creating a machine first. Lookup the documentation on system requirements for the settings. Then, search installing from an ISO (it's not hard). edit - had a thought - what are your actual VM settings and system specs? It's possible your device can't handle the typical VM settings in the prepared image. Like overtaxed RAM, CPU...less likely disk space. More on reddit.com