Parrot is based on Debian's testing branch, with a Linux 5.6 kernel. It follows a rolling releasedevelopment model. The desktop environments are MATE and KDE, 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 and 64-bit processor architectures. Moreover, the project is available for ARMv7 architectures. In June 2017, the Parrot Team announced they were considering to change from Debian to Devuan, mainly because of problems with systemd. As of January 21st, 2019, the Parrot team has begun to phase out the development of their 32-bit ISO.
Editions
Parrot has multiple editions that are based upon Debian, with various desktop environments available.
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. Allegedly, 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 customized pentesting platform. Parrot Home uses Debian technology.
Parrot ARM
Parrot ARM is a lightweight Parrot release for embedded systems. It is currently available for Raspberry Pi devices.
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
, 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. 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 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.
Release frequency
The development team has not specified any official release timeline, but based on release changelogs and the notes included in the official review of the distribution, the project will be released on a monthly basis.
