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11 <title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
13 <corpauthor>The &os; Project</corpauthor>
15 <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
24 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
27 <legalnotice 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 <title>Introduction</title>
47 <para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os; &release.current;, the
48 latest point along the &release.branch; branch.</para>
51 <title>About &os;</title>
53 <para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
54 DEC/Compaq/HP Alpha/AXP computers (alpha),
55 AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (amd64),
56 Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC hardware (i386),
57 Intel Itanium Processor based computers (ia64),
58 NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (pc98),
59 and &ultrasparc; machines (sparc64). Versions
60 for the &powerpc; (powerpc), and &mips; (mips)
61 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 <![ %release.type.current; [
94 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
95 and various other users who want to get involved with the
96 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
97 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
98 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
99 work-in-progress.</para>
101 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
102 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
103 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
104 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
106 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
107 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
108 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
109 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
110 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
114 <![ %release.type.snapshot; [
116 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
117 and various other users who want to get involved with the
118 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
119 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
120 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
121 work-in-progress.</para>
123 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
124 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
125 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
126 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
128 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
129 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
130 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
131 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
132 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
136 <![ %release.type.release; [
138 <para>This &release.type; of &os; is suitable for all users. It
139 has undergone a period of testing and quality assurance
140 checking to ensure the highest reliability and
141 dependability.</para>
149 <title>Obtaining &os;</title>
151 <para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
152 focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
153 complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
157 <title>CDROM and DVD</title>
159 <para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
160 from several publishers. This is frequently the most
161 convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
162 provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
163 necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
164 precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
167 <para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
168 project are listed in the <ulink
169 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
170 &os;</quote></ulink> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
176 <para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
177 optional packages from <ulink
178 url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/"></ulink>, which is the official
179 &os; release site, or any of its
180 <quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
182 <para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
184 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
185 Sites</ulink> section of the Handbook, or on the <ulink
186 url="http://mirrorlist.FreeBSD.org/"></ulink> Web pages.
187 Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
188 download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
190 <para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
191 <email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
192 becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
193 information for mirror sites at the <ulink
194 URL="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring
195 &os;</ulink> article.</para>
197 <para>Mirrors generally contain the floppy disk images necessary
198 to begin an installation, as well as the distribution files
199 needed for the install process itself. Many mirrors also
200 contain the ISO images necessary to create a CDROM of
201 a &os; release.</para>
206 <sect1 id="contacting">
207 <title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
210 <title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
212 <para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
213 please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
215 <para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development efforts, you
216 <emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.current;, in order to
217 keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may
218 affect the way you use and maintain the system.</para>
220 <para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os;
221 Project is always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there are already far more desired enhancements than
222 there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on
223 technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to
224 the &a.hackers;.</para>
226 <para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
227 <emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
228 have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
229 keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
230 preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
232 <para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
233 wishing to do so. Visit the <ulink url="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">
234 &os; Mailman Info Page</ulink>. This will give you more
235 information on joining the various lists, accessing archives,
236 etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special
237 interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be
238 obtained either from the Mailman pages or the <ulink
239 url="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
240 lists section</ulink> of the &os; Web site.</para>
243 <para>Do <emphasis>not</emphasis> send email to the lists
244 asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface
250 <title>Submitting Problem Reports</title>
252 <para>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are
253 always valued—please do not hesitate to report any
254 problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
255 course even more welcome.</para>
257 <para>The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine
258 with Internet mail connectivity is to use the &man.send-pr.1;
260 <quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
261 will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
262 will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
264 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi">A list
265 of all active PRs</ulink> is available on the &os; Web site;
266 this list is useful to see what potential problems other users
267 have encountered.</para>
269 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; itself is a shell script that
270 should be easy to move even onto a non-&os; system. Using
271 this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you
272 are unable to use &man.send-pr.1; to submit a bug report, you
273 can try to send it to the &a.bugs;.</para>
275 <para>For more information, <ulink
276 url="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
277 &os; Problem Reports</quote></ulink>, available on the &os; Web
278 site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
279 effective problem reports.</para>
284 <title>Further Reading</title>
286 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
287 included with this distribution, while others are available
288 on-line or in print versions.</para>
290 <sect2 id="release-docs">
291 <title>Release Documentation</title>
293 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
294 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
295 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
296 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
297 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
298 may also include other formats such as PostScript
299 (<filename>.PS</filename>) or 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>INSTALL.TXT</filename>: Installation
325 instructions for installing &os; from its distribution
330 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
331 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
332 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
333 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
334 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
335 contains the latest information on problems which have
336 been found and fixed since the release was
342 <para>Several of these documents (in particular,
343 <filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>,
344 <filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>, and
345 <filename>INSTALL.TXT</filename>) contain information that
346 is specific to a particular hardware architecture. For
347 example, the alpha release notes contain information not
348 applicable to the &i386;, and vice versa. The architecture
349 for which each document applies will be listed in that
350 document's title.</para>
355 <para>On platforms that support &man.sysinstall.8; (currently
356 alpha, &i386;, ia64, pc98, and &sparc64;), these documents are generally available via the
357 Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is
358 installed, you can revisit this menu by re-running the
359 &man.sysinstall.8; utility.</para>
362 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
363 given release before installing it, to learn about any
364 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
365 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
366 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
367 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
368 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
369 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
370 <ulink url="&url.base;/releases/"></ulink> (as
371 well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
377 <title>Manual Pages</title>
379 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
380 with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
381 &man.man.1; command or through the <ulink
382 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
383 pages gateway</ulink> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
384 manual pages provide information on the different commands and
385 APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
387 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
388 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
389 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
390 &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
391 &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
395 <title>Books and Articles</title>
397 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
398 maintained by the &os; Project,
399 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
400 Questions document). On-line versions of the <ulink
401 url="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</ulink>
403 url="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</ulink>
404 are always available from the <ulink
405 url="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
406 page</ulink> or its mirrors. If you install the
407 <filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
408 browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally.</para>
410 <para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
411 the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
412 This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
413 of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
414 operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
415 Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
416 Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
417 distribution set.</para>
419 <para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
421 url="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</ulink>
422 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
423 many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
424 applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
429 <sect1 id="acknowledgements">
430 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
432 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
433 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
434 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
435 complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
437 url="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
438 to &os;</quote></ulink> on the &os; Web site or any of its
441 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
442 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
443 simply would not have been possible.</para>
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