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15 <article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0">
16 <info><title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
19 <author><orgname>The &os; Project</orgname></author>
21 <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
25 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
28 <legalnotice xml:id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
37 <para>This document gives a brief introduction to &os;
38 &release.current;. It includes some information on how to
39 obtain &os;, a listing of various ways to contact the &os;
40 Project, and pointers to some other sources of
45 <sect1 xml:id="intro">
46 <title>Introduction</title>
48 <para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os; &release.current;, the
49 latest point along the &release.branch; branch.</para>
52 <title>About &os;</title>
54 <para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
55 AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (&arch.amd64;),
56 Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC hardware (&arch.i386;),
57 Intel Itanium Processor based computers (&arch.ia64;),
58 NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (&arch.pc98;),
59 and &ultrasparc; machines (&arch.sparc64;). Versions
60 for the &arm; (&arch.arm;), &mips; (&arch.mips;), and
61 &powerpc; (&arch.powerpc;) architectures are currently under
62 development as well. &os; works with a wide variety of
63 peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything
64 from software development to games to Internet Service
67 <para>This release of &os; contains everything you need to run
68 such a system, including full source code for the kernel and
69 all utilities in the base distribution. With the source
70 distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire
71 system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for
72 students, researchers, or users who simply want to see how it
75 <para>A large collection of third-party ported software (the
76 <quote>Ports Collection</quote>) is also provided to make it
77 easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional &unix;
78 utilities for &os;. Each <quote>port</quote> consists of a
79 set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install a
80 piece of software, with a single command. Over &os.numports;
81 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
82 applications, make &os; a powerful and comprehensive operating
83 environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many
84 commercial versions of &unix;. Most ports are also available as
85 pre-compiled <quote>packages</quote>, which can be quickly
86 installed from the installation program.</para>
90 <title>Target Audience</title>
92 <para releasetype="current">This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
93 and various other users who want to get involved with the
94 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
95 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
96 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
97 work-in-progress.</para>
99 <para releasetype="current">The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
100 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
101 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
102 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
104 <para releasetype="current">For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
105 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
106 (such as &release.prev;) are frequently more appropriate.
107 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
108 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
110 <para releasetype="snapshot">This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
111 and various other users who want to get involved with the
112 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
113 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
114 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
115 work-in-progress.</para>
117 <para releasetype="snapshot">The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
118 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
119 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
120 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
122 <para releasetype="snapshot">For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
123 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
124 (such as &release.prev;) are frequently more appropriate.
125 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
126 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
128 <para releasetype="release">This &release.type; of &os; is suitable for all users. It
129 has undergone a period of testing and quality assurance
130 checking to ensure the highest reliability and
131 dependability.</para>
135 <sect1 xml:id="obtain">
136 <title>Obtaining &os;</title>
138 <para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
139 focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
140 complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
144 <title>CDROM and DVD</title>
146 <para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
147 from several publishers. This is frequently the most
148 convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
149 provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
150 necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
151 precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
152 Collection, or other extra material.</para>
154 <para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
155 project are listed in the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
156 &os;</quote></link> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
162 <para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
163 optional packages from <uri xlink:href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/</uri>, which is the official
164 &os; release site, or any of its
165 <quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
167 <para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
168 <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
169 Sites</link> section of the Handbook.
170 Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
171 download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
173 <para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
174 <email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
175 becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
176 information for mirror sites at the <link xlink:href="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring
177 &os;</link> article.</para>
179 <para>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to
180 create a CDROM of a &os; release. They usually also contain
181 floppy disk images (for applicable platforms), as well as the
182 files necessary to do an installation over the network.
183 Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for
184 the most current release.</para>
188 <sect1 xml:id="contacting">
189 <title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
192 <title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
194 <para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
195 please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
197 <para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development efforts, you
198 <emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.stable;, in order to
199 keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may
200 affect the way you use and maintain the system.</para>
202 <para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os;
203 Project is always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there are already far more desired enhancements than
204 there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on
205 technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to
206 the &a.hackers;.</para>
208 <para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
209 <emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
210 have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
211 keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
212 preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
214 <para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
215 wishing to do so. Visit the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">
216 &os; Mailman Info Page</link>. This will give you more
217 information on joining the various lists, accessing archives,
218 etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special
219 interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be
220 obtained either from the Mailman pages or the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
221 lists section</link> of the &os; Web site.</para>
224 <para>Do <emphasis>not</emphasis> send email to the lists
225 asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface
231 <title>Submitting Problem Reports</title>
233 <para>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are
234 always valued—please do not hesitate to report any
235 problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
236 course even more welcome.</para>
238 <para>The method to submit bug reports from a machine
239 with Internet mail connectivity is to use the <link
240 xlink:href="https://bugs.freebsd.org/submit/">Bugzilla web
242 <quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
243 will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
244 will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
245 possible. A <link xlink:href="https://bugs.freebsd.org/search/">search
246 interface</link> of all active PRs is available;
247 this list is useful to find what potential problems other users
248 have encountered.</para>
250 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; is a stub shell script, and
251 instructs to use the Bugzilla interface.</para>
253 <para>For more information, <link xlink:href="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
254 &os; Problem Reports</quote></link>, available on the &os; Web
255 site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
256 effective problem reports.</para>
260 <sect1 xml:id="seealso">
261 <title>Further Reading</title>
263 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
264 included with this distribution, while others are available
265 on-line or in print versions.</para>
267 <sect2 xml:id="release-docs">
268 <title>Release Documentation</title>
270 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
271 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
272 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
273 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
274 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
275 may also include other formats such as Portable Document Format
276 (<filename>.PDF</filename>).
280 <para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
281 gives some general information about &os; as well as
282 some cursory notes about obtaining a
287 <para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
288 notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
289 &release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
290 &release.prev;).</para>
294 <para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
295 compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
296 been tested and is known to work.</para>
300 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
301 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
302 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
303 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
304 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
305 contains the latest information on problems which have
306 been found and fixed since the release was
313 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
314 given release before installing it, to learn about any
315 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
316 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
317 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
318 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
319 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
320 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
321 <uri xlink:href="&url.base;/releases/">the &os; releases page</uri> (as
322 well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
328 <title>Manual Pages</title>
330 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
331 with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
332 &man.man.1; command or through the <link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
333 pages gateway</link> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
334 manual pages provide information on the different commands and
335 APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
337 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
338 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
339 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
340 &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
341 &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
345 <title>Books and Articles</title>
347 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
348 maintained by the &os; Project,
349 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
350 Questions document). On-line versions of the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</link>
351 and <link xlink:href="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</link>
352 are always available from the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
353 page</link> or its mirrors. If you install the
354 <filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
355 browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular,
356 note that the Handbook contains a step-by-step guide to
357 installing &os;.</para>
359 <para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
360 the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
361 This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
362 of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
363 operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
364 Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
365 Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
366 distribution set.</para>
368 <para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
369 found in the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</link>
370 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
371 many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
372 applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
377 <sect1 xml:id="acknowledgements">
378 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
380 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
381 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
382 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
383 complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
384 <link xlink:href="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
385 to &os;</quote></link> on the &os; Web site or any of its
388 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
389 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
390 simply would not have been possible.</para>