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11 <title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
13 <corpauthor>The &os; Project</corpauthor>
15 <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
27 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
30 <legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
40 <para>This document gives a brief introduction to &os;
41 &release.current;. It includes some information on how to
42 obtain &os;, a listing of various ways to contact the &os;
43 Project, and pointers to some other sources of
48 <title>Introduction</title>
50 <para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os; &release.current;, the
51 latest point along the &release.branch; branch.</para>
54 <title>About &os;</title>
56 <para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
57 AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (&arch.amd64;),
58 Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC hardware (&arch.i386;),
59 Intel Itanium Processor based computers (&arch.ia64;),
60 NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (&arch.pc98;),
61 and &ultrasparc; machines (&arch.sparc64;). Versions
62 for the &arm; (&arch.arm;), &mips; (&arch.mips;), and
63 &powerpc; (&arch.powerpc;) architectures are currently under
64 development as well. &os; works with a wide variety of
65 peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything
66 from software development to games to Internet Service
69 <para>This release of &os; contains everything you need to run
70 such a system, including full source code for the kernel and
71 all utilities in the base distribution. With the source
72 distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire
73 system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for
74 students, researchers, or users who simply want to see how it
77 <para>A large collection of third-party ported software (the
78 <quote>Ports Collection</quote>) is also provided to make it
79 easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional &unix;
80 utilities for &os;. Each <quote>port</quote> consists of a
81 set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install a
82 piece of software, with a single command. Over &os.numports;
83 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
84 applications, make &os; a powerful and comprehensive operating
85 environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many
86 commercial versions of &unix;. Most ports are also available as
87 pre-compiled <quote>packages</quote>, which can be quickly
88 installed from the installation program.</para>
92 <title>Target Audience</title>
94 <![ %release.type.current; [
96 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
97 and various other users who want to get involved with the
98 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
99 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
100 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
101 work-in-progress.</para>
103 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
104 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
105 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
106 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
108 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
109 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
110 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
111 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
112 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
116 <![ %release.type.snapshot; [
118 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
119 and various other users who want to get involved with the
120 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
121 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
122 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
123 work-in-progress.</para>
125 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
126 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
127 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
128 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
130 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
131 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
132 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
133 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
134 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
138 <![ %release.type.release; [
140 <para>This &release.type; of &os; is suitable for all users. It
141 has undergone a period of testing and quality assurance
142 checking to ensure the highest reliability and
143 dependability.</para>
151 <title>Obtaining &os;</title>
153 <para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
154 focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
155 complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
159 <title>CDROM and DVD</title>
161 <para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
162 from several publishers. This is frequently the most
163 convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
164 provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
165 necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
166 precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
167 Collection, or other extra material.</para>
169 <para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
170 project are listed in the <ulink
171 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
172 &os;</quote></ulink> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
178 <para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
179 optional packages from <ulink
180 url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/"></ulink>, which is the official
181 &os; release site, or any of its
182 <quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
184 <para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
186 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
187 Sites</ulink> section of the Handbook.
188 Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
189 download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
191 <para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
192 <email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
193 becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
194 information for mirror sites at the <ulink
195 URL="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring
196 &os;</ulink> article.</para>
198 <para>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to
199 create a CDROM of a &os; release. They usually also contain
200 floppy disk images (for applicable platforms), as well as the
201 files necessary to do an installation over the network.
202 Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for
203 the most current release.</para>
207 <sect1 id="contacting">
208 <title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
211 <title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
213 <para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
214 please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
216 <para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development efforts, you
217 <emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.current;, in order to
218 keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may
219 affect the way you use and maintain the system.</para>
221 <para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os;
222 Project is always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there are already far more desired enhancements than
223 there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on
224 technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to
225 the &a.hackers;.</para>
227 <para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
228 <emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
229 have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
230 keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
231 preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
233 <para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
234 wishing to do so. Visit the <ulink url="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">
235 &os; Mailman Info Page</ulink>. This will give you more
236 information on joining the various lists, accessing archives,
237 etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special
238 interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be
239 obtained either from the Mailman pages or the <ulink
240 url="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
241 lists section</ulink> of the &os; Web site.</para>
244 <para>Do <emphasis>not</emphasis> send email to the lists
245 asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface
251 <title>Submitting Problem Reports</title>
253 <para>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are
254 always valued—please do not hesitate to report any
255 problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
256 course even more welcome.</para>
258 <para>The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine
259 with Internet mail connectivity is to use the &man.send-pr.1;
261 <quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
262 will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
263 will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
265 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi">A list
266 of all active PRs</ulink> is available on the &os; Web site;
267 this list is useful to see what potential problems other users
268 have encountered.</para>
270 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; itself is a shell script that
271 should be easy to move even onto a non-&os; system. Using
272 this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you
273 are unable to use &man.send-pr.1; to submit a bug report, you
274 can try to send it to the &a.bugs;.</para>
276 <para>For more information, <ulink
277 url="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
278 &os; Problem Reports</quote></ulink>, available on the &os; Web
279 site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
280 effective problem reports.</para>
285 <title>Further Reading</title>
287 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
288 included with this distribution, while others are available
289 on-line or in print versions.</para>
291 <sect2 id="release-docs">
292 <title>Release Documentation</title>
294 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
295 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
296 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
297 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
298 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
299 may also include other formats such as Portable Document Format
300 (<filename>.PDF</filename>).
304 <para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
305 gives some general information about &os; as well as
306 some cursory notes about obtaining a
311 <para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
312 notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
313 &release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
314 &release.prev;).</para>
318 <para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
319 compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
320 been tested and is known to work.</para>
324 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
325 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
326 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
327 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
328 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
329 contains the latest information on problems which have
330 been found and fixed since the release was
336 <para>On platforms that support &man.sysinstall.8; (currently
337 &arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;, &arch.ia64;, &arch.pc98;, and &arch.sparc64;), these documents are generally available via the
338 Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is
339 installed, you can revisit this menu by re-running the
340 &man.sysinstall.8; utility.</para>
343 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
344 given release before installing it, to learn about any
345 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
346 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
347 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
348 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
349 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
350 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
351 <ulink url="&url.base;/releases/"></ulink> (as
352 well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
358 <title>Manual Pages</title>
360 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
361 with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
362 &man.man.1; command or through the <ulink
363 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
364 pages gateway</ulink> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
365 manual pages provide information on the different commands and
366 APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
368 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
369 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
370 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
371 &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
372 &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
376 <title>Books and Articles</title>
378 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
379 maintained by the &os; Project,
380 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
381 Questions document). On-line versions of the <ulink
382 url="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</ulink>
384 url="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</ulink>
385 are always available from the <ulink
386 url="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
387 page</ulink> or its mirrors. If you install the
388 <filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
389 browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular,
390 note that the Handbook contains a step-by-step guide to
391 installing &os;.</para>
393 <para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
394 the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
395 This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
396 of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
397 operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
398 Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
399 Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
400 distribution set.</para>
402 <para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
404 url="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</ulink>
405 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
406 many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
407 applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
412 <sect1 id="acknowledgements">
413 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
415 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
416 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
417 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
418 complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
420 url="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
421 to &os;</quote></ulink> on the &os; Web site or any of its
424 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
425 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
426 simply would not have been possible.</para>
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