FLOSS Manuals
FLOSS Manuals is about providing quality manuals about how to use free sofware. We are a not-for-profit foundation established in Amsterdam in 2006. We are also a website (wiki), and a community of free documentation writers.
What we do
With 60% of all websites running on free software, why do only 1.7% of all computer users have free software on their desktops? The answer is simple and the Free Software Foundation has said it already :
"The biggest deficiency in free operating systems is not in the software—it is the lack of good free manuals"
FLOSS Manuals exists to provide this information to anyone, for free.
We do this through our website which is a wiki. If you are used to Wikipedia you might think FLOSS Manuals doesn't look much like a wiki. You would be right. However, the website is in fact a wiki, it is based on the very nice software called TWiki. Since we are a wiki you can read and contribute to the manuals.
READ, WRITE, REMIX
There are three basic parts to the FLOSS Manuals website - READ, WRITE, and REMIX.
In the READ section you can read manuals online or download them via PDF. Here we have arranged many manuals on how to use various free software. They are organised into software categories. Each of the manuals will help you get started and in general they cover the following:
- What does the software do?
- What does the software not do?
- Introduction to the software's context
- How to install the software
- How to configure the most important elements
- A basic introduction to the interface
- Using the software's most important features with hands-on step by step tutorials
- Where to go for more help
Through the WRITE section you can write manuals. This is the 'wiki' part of the site. You need to register for an account and then you can start contributions. Registration is required so that we can credit you with the changes you make. With FLOSS Manuals all material is licensed so that it can be used by anyone for any purpose. However we believe it is important you get the credit for the contributions you make so registration using your full name helps this process.
The REMIX section is the area which is undergoing the most on-going development. In the REMIX section you can actually make your own manuals from existing content. All chapters in the manuals are written so they are 'self contained' this means you can re-use them in other contexts. Hence we have built tools so you can remix manuals specific to your own requirements.
In REMIX you can drag chapters from existing manuals onto a template for your own manual and change the chapter names and their look-and-feel through the browser. You can then download your newly remixed manual as HTML (in a zip or tar file), which is good for including on CDs/USB sticks or reading offline. Alternatively you can export the remixed manual to a indexed PDF. Lastly, you can include the remixed manual in your own webpage or blog by cutting and pasting 5 lines of HTML.
Printed Manuals
In addition to the online free manuals, you can also buy some of the manuals through our print-on-demand service. We sell these manuals at the price it costs to print them. We make them as cheap as possible so that as many people as possible can get access to them. We don't make a cent from selling manuals.
