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Besides BackTrack having a cooler name and the whole Ubuntu vs. Arch Linux thing, what are the relative benefits of ArchPwn over BackTrack?

Are the tools broadly the same, or does one have better functionality in a particular area?

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I would say the biggest difference is that ArchPwn is not as actively developed. In fact it hasn't had a release in over a year which means its probably a dead project, or near dead. A lot happens in a year in the realm of security. In fact in the last year a tool for cracking WPA-PSK called Pyrit was released and can be found on BackTrack.

Now the counter argument is that both Archlinux and Ubuntu have package managers, and even though its a live CD you can really install anything or have USB stick with your own tool chain. It really depends what you are after. In fact no Live CD is going to have everything. Invariably you'll need a USB stick.

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USB stick, or build your own image based on one of the existing LiveCDs. – Iszi Feb 2 '12 at 3:19
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@Iszi Yeah I still like having a large (64gb) persistent store with my own word lists and rainbow tables. I guess you could use a dropbox for some of that instead of a usb stick. – Rook Feb 2 '12 at 4:00
@Iszi: yeah, I'd really like to get both running on a USB flash drive that will multi-boot into hardware dependent options such as the MacBook Air 4,1, or an HP laptop with a SED, etc. Sounds easier to do with any Ubuntu-based distro, but Arch Linux is so cool! – atdre Feb 2 '12 at 7:20

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