Parrot OS is a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

based on

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

with a focus on security, privacy, and development.

Core

Parrot is based on

's "testing" branch, with a Linux 5.10 kernel. It follows a rolling release development model. The desktop environments is

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, and the default display manager is LightDM. The system is certified to run on devices which have a minimum of 256MB of RAM, and it is suitable for both 32-bit ( i386) and 64-bit ( amd64) processor architectures. Moreover, the project is available for ARMv7 ( armhf) architectures. In June 2017, the Parrot Team announced they were considering to change from Debian to Devuan, mainly because of problems with

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. Its main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions; Its primary component is a "system and service manager ...

. As of January 21st, 2019, the Parrot team has begun to phase out the development of their 32-bit ( i386) ISO. In August 2020, the Parrot OS officially supports Lightweight Xfce Desktop.

Editions

Parrot has multiple editions that are based upon

, with various desktop environments available.

Parrot Security

Parrot is intended to provide a suite of penetration testing tools to be used for attack mitigation, security research, forensics, and vulnerability assessment. It is designed for penetration testing, vulnerability assessment and mitigation,

computer forensics Computer forensics (also known as computer forensic science) is a branch of digital forensic science pertaining to evidence found in computers and digital storage media. The goal of computer forensics is to examine digital media in a forensical ...

and

anonymous web browsing Private browsing is a privacy feature in some web browsers. When operating in such a mode, the browser creates a temporary session that is isolated from the browser's main session and user data. Browsing history is not saved, and local data as ...

Parrot Home

Parrot Home is the base edition of Parrot designed for daily use, and it targets regular users who need a "lightweight" system on their laptops or workstations. The distribution is useful for daily work. Parrot Home also includes programs to chat privately with people, encrypt documents, or browse the internet anonymously. The system can also be used as a starting point to build a system with a custom set of security tools.

Parrot ARM

Parrot ARM is a lightweight Parrot release for embedded systems. It is currently available for Raspberry Pi devices.

Parrot Architect & IoT

ParrotOS with nothing pre-installed. Install any software and DE with this edition.

Parrot OS Tools

There are multiple Tools in Parrot OS which are specially designed for Security Researchers and are related to penetration testing. A few of them are listed below, more can be found on the official website.

Tor

Tor, also known as The Onion Router, is a distributed network that anonymizes Internet browsing. It is designed in a way that the IP Address of the client using Tor is hidden from the server that the client is visiting. Also, the data and other details are hidden from the client’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). Tor network uses hops to encrypt the data between the client and the server. Tor network and Tor browser are pre-installed and configured in Parrot OS.

Onion Share

Onion Share is an open-source utility that can be used to share files of any size over the Tor network securely and anonymously. Onion Share then generates a long random

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

that can be used by the recipient to download the file over the TOR network using TOR browser.

AnonSurf

Anonsurf is a utility that makes the operating system communication go over Tor or other anonymizing networks. According to Parrot, AnonSurf secures your web browser and anonymizes your IP.

Notes

External links

Official WebsiteBlog & Release NotesDistroWatchDebian Derivatives Census
{{Linux-distro Debian-based distributions Computer security software Pentesting software toolkits Rolling Release Linux distributions Linux distributions