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.

OmniGet

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OmniGet

Website

Source Code

License: GPL-3.0

Description:

OmniGet is a free, open-source desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux that downloads content from 1,800+ sites via yt-dlp, with built-in course player, PDF/EPUB reader and music library. It runs offline with no telemetry, and offers transcription, conversion and AI plugins.

PersonaPlex

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PersonaPlex

Website

Source Code

License: MIT License

Description:

PersonaPlex is a real-time, full-duplex speech-to-speech model that enables persona control via text-based role prompts and audio-based voice conditioning. Trained on synthetic and real conversations, it delivers natural, low-latency interactions with a consistent persona, built on Moshi architecture with NVIDIA model weights.

Turbodrone

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Turbodrone

Website

Source Code

License: Apache-2.0

Description:

Reverse-engineering the best-selling Amazon drones to enable programmatic control via an API and web client, converting closed firmware into a controllable, extensible platform with backend and frontend components for several drone models.

Escrcpy

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Escrcpy

Website

Source Code

License: Apache-2.0

Description:

Desktop GUI and integration for scrcpy that displays and controls Android devices graphically. Features include an embedded mirror, keyboard mapping, multi-device management, wireless ADB, and automation, built on scrcpy with extensions from EscrcpyX.

God’s Eye View

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God’s Eye View

Website

Source Code

License: MIT License

Description:

God’s Eye View is an open-source browser-based spatial-intelligence globe that renders live public signals—aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, CCTV—on a photorealistic 3D Earth. It supports voice control, multiple data layers, and in-app key management for open data sources.