The idea of Friend is to build an OS that can be embedded into the internet. It is not owned, it is autonomous and permanent. It is part of the Permanent Web. And it will be a great deployment, distribution and user access network in the near future.

When you connect to a Friend access node — a web address somewhere on the internet — a Desktop Environment loads into your browser in a few seconds. Then, Friend apps can be launched, taking advantage of your own computer hardware to draw the GUI, do JavaScript based processing or 3D acceleration.

Currently, we have a Friend Smart Phone app for iOS or Android in beta. Here you can access the entire user experience in a mobile GUI.

The desktop, the Friend Workspace, uses both HTTP connections and persistent WebSocket connections between the server and client. The server performance is comparable to an Apache server. In addition to the server connections, it offers a WebRTC based network, on demand, between each user’s Workspace — allowing for VPN like networking functionality.

As an OS, Friend offers both client-side as well as server-side drivers for file systems, processing cores and other server functionality.

Version 1.1 was released on Github (FriendUP on Github) a couple of weeks ago. Our project is now actively seeking developers. Checkout FriendUP.cloud for more general information about the project.

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