FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. At FLOSS Manuals you can find manuals for free and open source software like office applications, as well as web editing and browsing, and tools for playing, making, streaming and sharing audio and video.

FLOSS Manuals make free software more accessible by providing clear documentation that accurately explains their purpose and use. Each manual explains what the software does and what it doesn't do, what the interface looks like, how to install it, how to set the most basic configuration necessary, and how to use its main functions. To ensure the information remains useful and up to date the manuals are regularly developed to add more advanced uses, and to document changes and new versions of the software.

You can read and use the manuals in a number of different ways. They can be read online in separately indexed chapters, and you can use the website as a reference base in this way. You can also view, download, or print each manual as a PDF file. It is also possible to ‘remix’ manuals to create a version that only includes specific aspects of a particular manual, or that combines chapters from two or more manuals in a single document. These can be downloaded and printed, added to websites, and used for any purpose. You can also print a manual, or an individually ‘remixed’ manual, as a book via the print-to-order service of Lulu.com.

The manuals on FLOSS Manuals are written by a community of people, who do a variety of things to keep the manuals as up to date and accurate as possible. Anyone can contribute to a manual – to fix a spelling mistake, to add a more detailed explanation, to write a new chapter, or to start a whole new manual. The way in which FLOSS Manuals are written mirrors the way in which FLOSS (Free, libre open source) software itself is written: by a community who contribute to and maintain the content.

See below for more information on using, contributing to, and remixing FLOSS Manuals, and on Free, Libre Open Source Software and the aims of the FLOSS Manuals Foundation.

Read: using FLOSS Manuals manuals

In the ‘Read’ section of the website you will find links to all of the currently live and up to date manuals, organised according to what kind of software they document. When you click on the software name, for example ‘VLC’ under ‘Media players’, you will see the introductory chapter of that software’s manual. The first chapter of each manual explains what kind of software it is, and some of its features. The menu on the left hand side allows you to navigate to specific chapters – for example the installation chapter that relates to the operating system you use. At the top of that left hand menu are options to view the manual in a single page that can be easily printed, or to create a PDF of it.

Write: contributing to FLOSS Manuals

The 'write' section is where you can write new chapters or edit existing chapters. You can correct a spelling or grammatical mistake, or add an extra instruction that you think would be useful, update chapters to reflect new versions of the software, or add new chapters and whole manuals. It is easy to contribute to the manuals through the FLOSS Manuals’ wiki interface. This uses a WYSIWIG editor so that you don’t need to understand any wiki code in order to write, edit and update manuals.

The changes you make in the ‘write’ section do not go live until the changes are approved and the newly updated manual is ‘published’. It is only then that the changes are visible from the ‘Read’ section, so don’t feel intimidated about contributing here!

Each manual has a ‘maintainer’, someone who is responsible for keeping the information up to date, and for publishing appropriate edits and other contributions. If you would like to maintain one of the existing manuals then contact us.

If you wish to start a new manual on another software then contact us and we can create one.

All material is licensed under the GPL, which is contained on the FLOSS Manuals server here: http://www.flossmanuals.net/License

Remix: creating personalised combinations of FLOSS Manuals

All the information in FLOSS Manuals can be reused for whatever purpose you have in mind – for your own reference, to give away, to use as materials in workshops and classes, or anything else you wish. Because the manuals are licensed under the GPL you can copy and distribute the information in anyway you like.

To make this more useful we also provide some tools so that you can make your own manuals out of useful sections of other manuals. In the 'remix' section you can combine chapters from any of the manuals into a single pdf. The pdf will include a table of contents that is automatically generated to list the chapters you have included, and you can also add (and design) a cover.

The FLOSS Manuals Foundation

The FLOSS Manuals Foundation (Stichting FLOSS Manuals) creates free, open source documentation for free, open source software. FLOSS Manuals is a community of free documentation writers that publish free manuals about free software across multiple languages.

Free software can be freely run, studied, redistributed and improved without the restrictive and often expensive licensing systems attached to commercial proprietary software. Developers can adapt free software to their own needs, and can contribute to its ongoing communal development. FLOSS Manuals specifically document software that is free in this development sense and also in price. Free software projects are developed using established methodologies and tools, and sites like Savannah and Sourceforge support established social production models for developing free software. FLOSS Manuals provides the methodologies, tools, and social production models for developing documentation of free software.

By supporting quality, user-friendly documentation of Free, Libre, Open Source Software, FLOSS Manuals aims to encourage the use of this software, to support the technical and social revolution it enables.