Parrot 7.0 brings KDE Plasma 6, Wayland support, new security tools, and RISC-V support

Parrot 7.0, code-named “Echo”, has arrived after a complete system rewrite that makes this release a major milestone for the security-focused Linux distribution. Building on this foundation, Parrot 7 now uses KDE Plasma 6 as its default desktop environment, applying custom themes for lighter performance and introducing Wayland as the default graphical session. These changes align with updates brought in by Debian 13 as well.

Addressing its core mission, Parrot 7 delivers the latest penetration testing tools, expands with several new additions (convoC2, goshs, evil-winrm-py, hexstrike-ai, bpf-linker, pkinit-tools, chisel, bloodhound.py, autorecon, trufflehog), and introduces a dedicated AI category. The parrot-tools metapackage now pre-installs a broader set of utilities, increasing the default suite users receive after installation.

Meanwhile, the release ushers in official support for the RISC-V architecture, marking Parrot as the first penetration-testing distribution to offer this compatibility. Along with this, the build system itself has seen significant enhancements, with core components heavily refactored to improve maintainability and support community-driven spins. Parrot plans to provide official support and sponsorship for curated editions that may feature other desktop environments or additional configurations.

Following these developments, improvements to the Parrot updater, as well as updated images for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Docker, round out the release by improving accessibility and ongoing usability for a wide range of users.