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19 <title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
21 <author><orgname>The &os; Project</orgname></author>
23 <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
44 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation
48 <legalnotice xml:id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
57 <para>This document gives a brief introduction to &os;
58 &release.current;. It includes some information on how to
59 obtain &os;, a listing of various ways to contact the &os;
60 Project, and pointers to some other sources of
65 <sect1 xml:id="intro">
66 <title>Introduction</title>
68 <para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os;
69 &release.current;, the latest point along the &release.branch;
73 <title>About &os;</title>
75 <para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
76 AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (&arch.amd64;),
77 Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC
78 hardware (&arch.i386;), NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and
79 compatibles (&arch.pc98;), and &ultrasparc; machines
80 (&arch.sparc64;). Versions for the &arm; (&arch.arm;), &mips;
81 (&arch.mips;), and &powerpc; (&arch.powerpc;) architectures
82 are currently under development as well. &os; works with
83 a wide variety of peripherals and configurations and can be
84 used for everything from software development to games to
85 Internet Service Provision.</para>
87 <para>This release of &os; contains everything you need to run
88 such a system, including full source code for the kernel and
89 all utilities in the base distribution. With the source
90 distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire
91 system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for
92 students, researchers, or users who simply want to see how it
95 <para>A large collection of third-party ported software (the
96 <quote>Ports Collection</quote>) is also provided to make it
97 easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional
98 &unix; utilities for &os;. Each <quote>port</quote> consists
99 of a set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install
100 a piece of software, with a single command. Over
101 &os.numports; ports, from editors to programming languages to
102 graphical applications, make &os; a powerful and comprehensive
103 operating environment that extends far beyond what's provided
104 by many commercial versions of &unix;. Most ports are also
105 available as pre-compiled <quote>packages</quote>, which can
106 be quickly installed from the installation program.</para>
110 <title>Target Audience</title>
112 <para releasetype="current">This &release.type; is aimed
113 primarily at early adopters and various other users who want
114 to get involved with the ongoing development of &os;. While
115 the &os; development team tries its best to ensure that each
116 &release.type; works as advertised, &release.branch; is very
117 much a work-in-progress.</para>
119 <para releasetype="current">The basic requirements for using
120 this &release.type; are technical proficiency with &os; and an
121 understanding of the ongoing development process of &os;
122 &release.branch; (as discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
124 <para releasetype="current">For those more interested in doing
125 business with &os; than in experimenting with new &os;
126 technology, formal releases (such as &release.prev.stable;)
127 are frequently more appropriate. Releases undergo a period of
128 testing and quality assurance checking to ensure high
129 reliability and dependability.</para>
131 <para releasetype="snapshot">This &release.type; is aimed
132 primarily at early adopters and various other users who want
133 to get involved with the ongoing development of &os;. While
134 the &os; development team tries its best to ensure that each
135 &release.type; works as advertised, &release.branch; is very
136 much a work-in-progress.</para>
138 <para releasetype="snapshot">The basic requirements for using
139 this &release.type; are technical proficiency with &os; and an
140 understanding of the ongoing development process of &os;
141 &release.branch; (as discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
143 <para releasetype="snapshot">For those more interested in doing
144 business with &os; than in experimenting with new &os;
145 technology, formal releases (such as &release.prev.stable;)
146 are frequently more appropriate. Releases undergo a period of
147 testing and quality assurance checking to ensure high
148 reliability and dependability.</para>
150 <para releasetype="release">This &release.type; of &os; is
151 suitable for all users. It has undergone a period of testing
152 and quality assurance checking to ensure the highest
153 reliability and dependability.</para>
157 <sect1 xml:id="obtain">
158 <title>Obtaining &os;</title>
160 <para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
161 focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
162 complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
166 <title>CDROM and DVD</title>
168 <para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
169 from several publishers. This is frequently the most
170 convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
171 provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
172 necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
173 precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
174 Collection, or other extra material.</para>
176 <para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
177 project are listed in the <link
178 xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
179 &os;</quote></link> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
185 <para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
186 optional packages from <uri
187 xlink:href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/</uri>,
188 which is the official &os; release site, or any of its
189 <quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
191 <para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
192 <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
193 Sites</link> section of the Handbook.
194 Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
195 download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
197 <para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
198 <email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
199 becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
200 information for mirror sites at the <link
201 xlink:href="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring &os;</link>
204 <para>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to
205 create a CDROM of a &os; release. They usually also contain
206 floppy disk images (for applicable platforms), as well as the
207 files necessary to do an installation over the network.
208 Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for
209 the most current release.</para>
213 <sect1 xml:id="contacting">
214 <title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
217 <title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
219 <para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
220 please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
222 <para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development
223 efforts, you <emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.current;,
224 in order to keep abreast of recent developments and changes
225 that may affect the way you use and maintain the
228 <para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os; Project is
229 always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there
230 are already far more desired enhancements than there is time
231 to implement them. To contact the developers on technical
232 matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to the
235 <para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
236 <emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
237 have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
238 keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
239 preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
241 <para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
242 wishing to do so. Visit the <link
243 xlink:href="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">&os; Mailman Info
244 Page</link>. This will give you more information on joining
245 the various lists, accessing archives, etc. There are
246 a number of mailing lists targeted at special interest groups
247 not mentioned here; more information can be obtained either
248 from the Mailman pages or the <link
249 xlink:href="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
250 lists section</link> of the &os; Web site.</para>
253 <para>Do <emphasis>not</emphasis> send email to the lists
254 asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface
260 <title>Submitting Problem Reports</title>
262 <para>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are
263 always valued—please do not hesitate to report any
264 problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
265 course even more welcome.</para>
267 <para>The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine
268 with Internet connectivity is to use the
269 <application>Bugzilla</application> bug tracker.
270 <quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
271 will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
272 will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
274 xlink:href="https://bugs.FreeBSD.org/search/">A list of all
275 active PRs</link> is available on the &os; Web site; this
276 list is useful to see what potential problems other users have
279 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; is deprecated.</para>
281 <para>For more information, <link
282 xlink:href="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
283 &os; Problem Reports</quote></link>, available on the &os;
284 Web site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and
285 submitting effective problem reports.</para>
289 <sect1 xml:id="seealso">
290 <title>Further Reading</title>
292 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
293 included with this distribution, while others are available
294 on-line or in print versions.</para>
296 <sect2 xml:id="release-docs">
297 <title>Release Documentation</title>
299 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
300 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
301 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
302 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
303 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
304 may also include other formats such as Portable Document
305 Format (<filename>.PDF</filename>).</para>
309 <para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
310 gives some general information about &os; as well as
311 some cursory notes about obtaining a
316 <para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
317 notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
318 &release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
319 &release.prev;).</para>
323 <para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
324 compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
325 been tested and is known to work.</para>
329 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
330 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
331 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
332 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
333 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
334 contains the latest information on problems which have
335 been found and fixed since the release was
340 <para>On platforms that support &man.bsdinstall.8; (currently
341 &arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;, &arch.pc98;, and &arch.sparc64;),
342 these documents are generally available via the Documentation
343 menu during installation. Once the system is installed, you
344 can revisit this menu by re-running the &man.bsdinstall.8;
348 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
349 given release before installing it, to learn about any
350 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
351 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
352 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
353 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
354 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
355 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
357 xlink:href="&url.base;/releases/">&url.base;/releases/</uri>
358 (as well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
364 <title>Manual Pages</title>
366 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os;
367 comes with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
368 &man.man.1; command or through the <link
369 xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext
370 manual pages gateway</link> on the &os; Web site. In
371 general, the manual pages provide information on the different
372 commands and APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
374 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
375 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
376 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance
377 tuning), &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security),
378 and &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
382 <title>Books and Articles</title>
384 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
385 maintained by the &os; Project,
386 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions
387 document). On-line versions of the <link
388 xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</link> and <link
389 xlink:href="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</link> are always
390 available from the <link
391 xlink:href="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
392 page</link> or its mirrors. If you install the
393 <filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
394 browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular,
395 note that the Handbook contains a step-by-step guide to
396 installing &os;.</para>
398 <para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
399 the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
400 This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
401 of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
402 operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
403 Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
404 Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
405 distribution set.</para>
407 <para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
409 xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</link>
410 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix;
411 heritage, many other articles and books written for &unix;
412 systems are applicable as well, some of which are also listed
413 in the bibliography.</para>
417 <sect1 xml:id="acknowledgements">
418 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
420 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
421 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
422 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For
423 a complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
425 xlink:href="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
426 to &os;</quote></link> on the &os; Web site or any of its
429 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
430 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
431 simply would not have been possible.</para>