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