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.

Eurydice

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Eurydice

Website

Source Code

License: Apache-2.0, MIT

Description:

Eurydice compiles (a decent subset of) Rust to C, enabling Rust-based verification while producing C code for legacy environments. It uses Charon and KaRaMeL passes to translate Rust into C, supporting compatibility with existing toolchains.

MiniOS

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MiniOS

Website

Source Code

License: GPL-2.0

Description:

MiniOS is a lightweight, fast Debian-based Linux distribution designed to run from USB or RAM. It features an XFCE desktop, live-boot support (UEFI/BIOS), Debian stability, and modular SquashFS extensions for a portable, customizable desktop.

gamescope

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gamescope

Website

Source Code

License: BSD 2-Clause License

Description:

Gamescope is Valve’s SteamOS session window manager (a micro-compositor formerly steamcompmgr). It composes game frames via Wayland/Xwayland, can flip frames directly via DRM/KMS, and uses async Vulkan compute when composing. It runs on desktop environments and supports virtual screens and exotic display setups.

Atmosphere

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Atmosphere

Website

Source Code

License: GPL-2.0

Description:

Atmosphere is a work-in-progress customized firmware for the Nintendo Switch. It replaces and patches core system components to enable homebrew and other features. It is licensed under GPL-2.0 with exemptions and maintained by a team of contributors.

ACE-Step-1.5

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ACE-Step-1.5

Website

Source Code

License: MIT

Description:

ACE-Step-1.5 is an open-source local music generation model that runs on Mac, AMD, Intel, and CUDA devices. It delivers fast, high-quality music synthesis with controllable styles, editing features, and LoRA personalization. The project combines LM planning with diffusion-based synthesis via a modular architecture and accessible UI tooling.