Parrot is light by the standards of a full desktop distribution. These figures apply to the current 7.x releases.
Minimum and recommended
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 64-bit dual-core | 64-bit quad-core |
| RAM | 2 GB | 4 GB or more |
| Disk | 40 GB | 40 GB or more, SSD |
| GPU | None required | Only for Hashcat acceleration |
The 7.1 release announcement gave a dual-core CPU, 4 GB of RAM and 40 GB of disk as the recommended baseline, and the 7.0 notes state that every edition except Core needs at least 2 GB of RAM.
By edition
- Security and Hack The Box editions: plan for 4 GB of RAM or more if you run a browser, Burp Suite and a few tools together.
- Home Edition: the same base requirements with a smaller installed footprint.
- Core (minimal): the option for low-memory hardware such as a Raspberry Pi 3B.
- Raspberry Pi: a Pi 4, 400 or 5; see Raspberry Pi images.
Desktop choice matters
KDE Plasma 6, the default since 7.0, is comfortable with 4 GB of RAM. On older machines choose the MATE or LXQt spin, or the lightweight Enlightenment spin introduced in 7.1. See desktop environments.
Virtual machines and containers
- VirtualBox or VMware: give the VM 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM and a 40 GB disk for the Security Edition. Guide: Parrot on VirtualBox.
- Docker: needs far less, because it shares the host kernel. Guide: Parrot on Docker.
Optimized ISOs (7.4)
The amd64v3 images target the x86-64-v3 feature level, which requires AVX2. That means roughly Intel Haswell (2013) or AMD Excavator (2015) and newer. If you are unsure, use the standard amd64 ISO, which runs on any 64-bit PC.
Boot, wireless and GPUs
Booting from USB is covered in system boot. Any Wi-Fi card works for normal use, but packet injection needs a supported chipset (list). NVIDIA cards need the proprietary driver for CUDA and Hashcat (guide).