Friend OS v1.2.8, "Hydrogen 4"

NB: For extended functionality and related Friend projects such as the Android app refer here.

Release notes

FriendUPCloud#153

The Friend OS leverages the computing power of the Internet to offer many of the features and functionalities of Chrome OS, Windows, Linux, Android, macOS or iOS, without the need to choose a specific hardware platform or proprietary software package. If you have a device that is connected to the Internet, you can use the Friend OS.

The FriendOS liberates you from Big Tech: It gives you control to create, collaborate, store and share information, data and content across all your devices in a secure private environment and access it anywhere on any device.

Free account

Get a free account on our production environment: https://friendsky.cloud/

Across devices

With its responsive desktop environment and client-side, javascript based technologies, Friend OS offers a new reality where you work and play online, independently from your local web enabled hardware. By supporting all screen formats, from mobile phones to laptops and VR, Friend OS is a single target through which you can reach the entire user market.

Distributed and powerful

Friend OS aims to make the powerful emerging web technologies easy to work with. This is why we reach out to you, to help us enrich this platform with DOS drivers, modules, libraries and apps so that we can cover all of the interesting technologies out there that people use and love. In the Future, Friend OS will be to the cloud users what Linux is for machines.

Getting started

Friend OS can be tested on https://friendsky.cloud - signup is free.

Please follow this guide to install Friend OS:

For Ubuntu 18: https://docs.friendos.com/docs/administrator-guide/installation/
For Ubuntu 20: https://docs.friendos.com/docs/administrator-guide/installation-ubuntu-20/

Running the serving kernel manually

Friend Core can be installed in any directory you wish, including root directories. The installer creates two global variables, FRIEND_HOME pointing to the cloned friendup directory, and FRIEND_PATH pointing to the directory where Friend Core has been build. After running the installer script, you will need to reboot your machine for these variables to be defined.

When you want to run Friend Core yourself, you enter into its build directory. Like this:

cd myfriend/build/
./FriendCore

If you want to run it without debug output in your console, you can use nohup:

nohup ./FriendCore >> /dev/null &

If you want to kill Friend Core and it's dedicated servers (see later), use the killfriend.sh script located in both the build directory and the friendup directory.

./killfriend.sh

The installation script overwrites the content of the Friend Core configuration file (build/cfg/cfg.ini), and will erase the extra data you have entered manually.

If you just want to recompile Friend Core, enter the following command in a shell:

cd myfriend
make clean setup release install

Default login

Once the installation script is finished and your local FriendCore is up and running use these credentials to log in:

    User: fadmin
Password: securefassword

The first thing you may want to do, is add a new user : run the 'users' application that can be found in the 'System:Software/System' directory.

Friend Network

Friend Network is included in this project, but must be installed separately. It can only be installed on an already installed Friend Core.

To install Friend Network, enter the following command in a shell:

cd myfriend
./installFriendNetwork.sh

In order to function, Friend Network needs a node server running on the machine. Friend Network installer will automatically install the latest version of node, npm and n.

You will also need to provide links to a TURN server, a STUN server and the credentials to enter the TURN server. The installer provides access to a public stun and turn server at:

  turn Server: ice.friendup.cloud
    turn User: TINA
turn Password: TURNER

stun Server: ice.friendup.cloud

Friend Network server will be automatically launched when you run Friend Core after a successful installation.

In order to kill Friend Core and all the associated servers, we suggest you use the 'killfriend.sh' script.

Friend Chat

You can also install Friend Chat, our integrated text and video communication tool.

FriendChat can only be installed on an already installed Friend Core.

To install FriendChat, enter the following command in a shell:

cd myfriend
./installFriendChat.sh

The installer will check for node.js, npm and n and install them if necessary.

Friend Chat needs Friend Core to run with TLS protection : if you have not defined TLS keys during the installation of Friend Core, the Friend Chat installer will give you the opportunity to create them. Once this is done, Friend Core will run in TLS mode, and you will have to connect to your Friend machine with 'https' instead of 'http'.

As for Friend Network, you will need to provide links to a TURN server, a STUN server and the credentials to enter the TURN server.

Friend Chat needs two servers to function, the 'Presence' server, and the 'Friend Chat' server. Both servers will automatically be launched by Friend Core.

In order to kill Friend Core and all the associated servers, we suggest you use the 'killfriend.sh' script.

Please note that the 'Presence' server, necessary for IRC connections, does not work with user 'fadmin'": you have to create a real user and define both its name and user name and use its session for it to connect.

Ports

• 6502 -> used by main Friend Workspace. Needs to be forwarded by the router to permit remote access.
• 6500 ->
• 3306 -> used by MSQL database
• 3478 -> (UDP, TCP) Stun servers
• 5349 -> (TLS) Stun servers

Documentation

You can find the developer documentation in the docs folder. An administration guide will be added soon.

Licensing

Friend OS is a large system consisting of several layers. It has a kernel core that is managing the Friend resources. This one is licensed under the MIT license. Then it has modules, DOS drivers and runtime linked libraries. These are licensed under the LGPLv3 license. Finally, we have the GUI for Friend - the Friend Workspace. This is licensed under the AGPLv3 license.

Contributor agreement

New developers joining the project needs to sign our contributor agreement before they are allowed to commit changes to the project. The contributor agreement can be found here:

• https://friendos.com/contributors/

The contributor agreement is our vehicle for ensuring that this project can enjoy commercial support and gain essential project management, as well as an open book development cycle on Github.

Developer Community / Chat rooms

We invite everybody to join our Discord developer community at https://discord.gg/GREj9Gv.

Demo server

For those that just want to test our Workspace, you can try our demo after registering at https://go.friendup.cloud/

Tested - a lot

We extensively test our platform and use https://www.browserstack.com/ for cross browser testing.

List of dependencies

This is the list of dependencies Friend Core needs to function.

• bash
• libssh2-1-dev
• libssh-dev
• libssl-dev
• libaio-dev
• mysql-server
• php7-cli
• php7-gd
• php7-imap
• php7-mysql
• php7-curl
• libmysqlclient-dev
• build-essential
• libmatheval-dev
• libmagic-dev
• libgd-dev
• libuv
• rsync
• valgrind-dbg
• libxml2-dev
• php7-readline
• cmake
• ssh
• make
• libsmbclient-dev