Parrot Security OS

These are my notes, dotfiles and tweaks/configurations made for the Parrot Security OS to make it emulate my typical workflow from other distros more.

As Parrot is running MATE, quite a bunch of configurations and tweaks have to be made through menus, in such cases I have tried to document how such is done in this README - rest of the tweaks are dotfiles etc. and should be able to be found in this repo.

pwnbox theme

Follow instructions by theGuildHall to emulate the pwnbox theme on your version of Parrot if you want - I would recommend following it at least just for the HTB VPN tweaks: https://github.com/theGuildHall/pwnbox

VIM

Install vim-plug: https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug and the most of the config file is taken from my dotfiles repository: https://github.com/4lgn/dotfiles/blob/bspwm/.vimrc

As the default is nvim, remember to install the config file under ~/.config/nvim/init.vim, this config file is also found in this repo.

tmux

Config file found in ./tmux.conf

Note-taking

I use Obsidian for note-taking, you can use snap to install it quickly

Screenshotting

To easily and quickly screengrab a portion of my screen, I use maim and a keyboard shortcut to perform the script to pipe it into the clipboard:

maim -s | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

Keyboard stuff

Shortcuts

Open application Keyboard Shortcuts and set the following

Workspaces

"Switch to workspace x": "Mod4+x"

"Move window to workspace x": "Shift+Mod4+x"

Custom

Misc.

"Close window": "Shift+Mod4+Q"

"Maximize window": "Mod4+F"

"Restore window": "Mod4+Down"

Map Caps -> ESC

Keyboard -> Layouts -> remember to have a "Keyboard model" selected -> Options -> Caps Lock behavior -> Make Caps Lock an additional Esc

Misc. MATE tweaks

Power management

This is mainly regarding not dimming backlight brightness when on battery - I can control the screen brightness myself, thanks.

Remove desktop icons

MATE Tweak -> Desktop -> untick everything you don't want shown

Mouse settings

VNC

I use tigervnc, and the vnc config file to startup a MATE session is found in ~/.vnc/xstartup

Make sure tigervnc is installed:

sudo apt install tigervnc-standalone-server tigervnc-xorg-extension

Start the server

vncserver -localhost no

On the viewing desktop, I usually just use the RealVNC Viewer as it captures the keyboard, allowing me to use all my shortcuts etc.