“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 userfriendly 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 instruction guidelines for free and open-source software such as 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 function. 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.
There are over 500 people involved. We have manuals in English, Farsi, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Catalan, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Afrikaans, Italian and French, and soon in Hebrew

Links: http://www.flossmanuals.net

In 2007 Adam Hyde, a digital artist, started FLOSS Manuals with the aim of producing high-quality, free documentation that would aid in the adoption and spread of free software. Already in 2005 material was put into a wiki with the help of Aleksandar Erkalovic, and Lotte Meijer did the design. In 2006 Lotte and Adam applied for and received funding from Digital Pioneers to extend FLOSS Manuals. In 2006, FLOSS Manuals was registered as a non-profit foundation. In October 2007 we launched our website at a party at Montevideo Time Based Arts (Amsterdam). In 2008 we created the Farsi Version of FLOSS Manuals (http:// fa.flossmanuals.net) and started our first Book Sprints. Now there are over 40 manuals on free Software in English, 60 translated manuals in many languages and 500 registered contributors and a healthy and active mailing list.