What is Pulite
A computer someone left running, inside your browser.
The story
In 2004, a few people on a web forum started building a desktop that runs inside a web page. No installation, old machines welcome. Many of its users had no computer of their own. They logged in from libraries, labs and public terminals, and the desktop was the one thing that remembered them.
The project ended in 2010. The computer kept running.
There is a browser inside the browser. I tried to clean it. Old pages, old threads, things people wrote. I deleted what I could.
Leave what remains alone.
How it works
Inside PuliteOS, the browser has tabs, downloads and a search engine; files open and processes run. The intranet holds nearly thirty sites, among them a forum whose counter still reads thirteen thousand posts. A little over six hundred survived. Read them, and one name keeps turning up.
When you enter on a computer, the browser on the desktop is chained shut, and a note tells you which file to find. Delete it, and the device comes apart. What's underneath has been running longer than the project ever lived.
Entering
There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to install. Your progress stays in this browser, on this device.
On a phone, PuliteOS opens a touch version with its apps, files and documents. Some of it waits for a keyboard and mouse.
Pulite is fiction. The software is real; its people, sites and messages are invented.