Welcome Friend!

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Hello Friend and welcome to The Friendly Manual. You know, as in RTFM – ‘Read The Friendly Manual.’ (That’s right, the ‘F’ stands for ‘Friendly.’ Trust me on this, I would never lie to you about something so important.)

This project aims to showcase and promote Free/Libre and Open Source Software. It began life as a forum thread on South Africa’s number one IT website, mybroadband.co.za with community members contributing hundreds of their favourite Free or Open Source applications to a ‘Useful List of Free/Libre/Open Source Software Projects.’

The list has been hosted as a Github Gist but now we have upgraded to a website so we can make the list even more useful and publish richer content such as tutorials and blog articles.

Please check out our Friendly Free Software Directory for a list of Free software that we hope you will find interesting and useful. You can find the original forum thread HERE and the original list HERE.

Thanks for stopping by. Please check back soon for more Free and Open Source software related content.

SmartClipboard

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SmartClipboard

Website

Source Code

License: MIT License

Description:

SmartClipboard is a local, privacy-first clipboard workspace that rewrites, summarizes, reformats, and extracts structured information using local Ollama-based LLMs. It stores clipboard history locally (SQLite), supports a Composer workspace, AI actions, and JSON-driven personas, with no cloud APIs and data staying on the user’s machine.

IronClaw

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IronClaw

Website

Source Code

License: Apache-2.0, MIT

Description:

IronClaw is an OpenClaw‑inspired, open‑source AI assistant written in Rust. It emphasizes privacy and security with local encrypted data storage, a WASM sandbox for tools, and defense‑in‑depth measures. It supports multi‑channel access, plugin expansion, and self‑expanding capabilities.

simdjson

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simdjson

Website

Source Code

License: Apache-2.0, MIT

Description:

simdjson is a high-performance C++ JSON parser that uses SIMD and automatic CPU optimization to parse gigabytes of JSON per second, with fast, UTF-8 validated parsing and On-Demand APIs; supports multiple bindings and ports.

drgn

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drgn

Website

Source Code

License: LGPL-2.1-or-later

Description:

drgn is a programmable debugger exposing program types and variables for Python scripting, enabling deep introspection of running kernels and user-space programs. It also serves as a library for building debugging and introspection tools.

InsiderEnroller

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InsiderEnroller

Website

Source Code

License: MIT

Description:

Batch script to join the Windows Insider Program, offering multiple channels (Canary, Dev, Beta, Release Preview, Stop, Exit). Includes usage instructions and safety notes; best used in a VM with a system restore point.

Winslop

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Winslop

Website

Source Code

License: MIT License

Description:

De-slop Windows by removing unnecessary bloat with local, deterministic changes. A focused fork of CrapFixer, mainly in C# and PowerShell, it shows what’s running and lets you control what’s changed—no cloud, no assistants.

weathr

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weathr

Website

Source Code

License: GPL-3.0-or-later

Description:

weathr is a terminal weather app with ASCII animations driven by real-time data (Open-Meteo). It features weather-based animations (rain, snow, thunderstorms), day/night cycles, auto-location detection, and multiple installation options (Cargo, Nix, Homebrew).