Learning all popular OSes basics + configs + working

Question

One of my aim is to be a ethical hacker. I know that, one of the features of good hacker is that, the hacker must have a little knowledge and experience of some most popular OSes.
The OSes I have experience are:

Windows:
Ms Windows 2000, XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 10 pro
Windows vista

Linux:
Ubuntu:
Xenial Xerus, Mint
Kernel:
Android
Debian:
Kali
Unfortunately, My experience in following OSes are:
Mac: null;
Chrome OS: 1/100;
Fedora: null
IOS X: null
DOS: null

My question is, How can I gain better experience in all most popular OSes, without buying, installing and uninstalling them after learning them.
To Learn a OS:
1.) Buy/Download the OS
2.)Install in PC
3.)It takes some time to learn
4.)Have a experience on their working and system changing or modifying things if is open source
5.)Remove them from PC

OMG, isn't there any other way? And please don't offer me the idea of using virtual machine/box! I am done with slow vbox/machine.

Answer 1

You don't need a shallow understanding of how to use a bunch of operating systems.

It's much better to learn about networking, servers, rights management, privilege escalation etc.

So here are the OSes I would say you need to know:

Windows
Linux (doesn't matter which)
OpenBSD
maybe MacOS
maybe OpenBSD

Kali Linux or Parrot Security OS (also Linux)
- - Operating Systems built for "penetration testing" (hacking), so you should run this on hardware

So your setup should probably be this:

Computer/Laptop A: Your main computer -- run your pentesting OS (or dual-boot it with your main)
Computer/Laptop B (this one can be cheap, if it isn't your main): Windows, with VMs (more on this later), maybe dual-booted with your main

You should learn by hacking computer B with computer A.

Pro tip:
VMs aren't laggy at all:
(a) use VMWare
(b) load your Linux/BSD iso
(c) give it 2GB of RAM and 2 cores
(d) DON'T INSTALL ANY GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
(e) It'll run like a charm
(f) Forward ports

Answer 2

VMs are not generally laggy you just need decent hardware (at least 8GB RAM + e.g. a core i5). Actually a lot of people do their daily work in a VM

Answer 3

I personally don't have much experience with hacking, but I wouldn't care too much about all those OS out there. It would probably be better to understand one OS very good because all OS are similar in many parts. Especially Linux distros don't actually matter because they often are almost the same except from small details. Also Chrome OS and Android are Linux based and even OSX is at least Unix based.
And btw. virtual machines are really the best way to test OS because you basically can't do anything wrong. Also you can usually save snapshots of an OS so you can reset the VM if you broke the system accidentally. Of coarse they're not that efficient but with decent hardware it's not that bad.

Answer 4

@Aron
That's a laggy way!