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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.stable;).</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.stable;) 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.stable;).</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.stable;) 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 preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine
239 with Internet mail connectivity is to use the &man.send-pr.1;
241 <quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
242 will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
243 will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
244 possible. <link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi">A list
245 of all active PRs</link> is available on the &os; Web site;
246 this list is useful to see what potential problems other users
247 have encountered.</para>
249 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; itself is a shell script that
250 should be easy to move even onto a non-&os; system. Using
251 this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you
252 are unable to use &man.send-pr.1; to submit a bug report, you
253 can try to send it to the &a.bugs;.</para>
255 <para>For more information, <link xlink:href="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
256 &os; Problem Reports</quote></link>, available on the &os; Web
257 site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
258 effective problem reports.</para>
262 <sect1 xml:id="seealso">
263 <title>Further Reading</title>
265 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
266 included with this distribution, while others are available
267 on-line or in print versions.</para>
269 <sect2 xml:id="release-docs">
270 <title>Release Documentation</title>
272 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
273 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
274 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
275 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
276 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
277 may also include other formats such as Portable Document Format
278 (<filename>.PDF</filename>).
282 <para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
283 gives some general information about &os; as well as
284 some cursory notes about obtaining a
289 <para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
290 notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
291 &release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
292 &release.prev;).</para>
296 <para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
297 compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
298 been tested and is known to work.</para>
302 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
303 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
304 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
305 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
306 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
307 contains the latest information on problems which have
308 been found and fixed since the release was
314 <para>On platforms that support &man.bsdinstall.8; (currently
315 &arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;, &arch.ia64;, &arch.pc98;, and &arch.sparc64;), these documents are generally available via the
316 Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is
317 installed, you can revisit this menu by re-running the
318 &man.bsdinstall.8; utility.</para>
321 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
322 given release before installing it, to learn about any
323 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
324 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
325 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
326 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
327 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
328 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
329 <uri xlink:href="&url.base;/releases/">&url.base;/releases/</uri> (as
330 well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
336 <title>Manual Pages</title>
338 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
339 with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
340 &man.man.1; command or through the <link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
341 pages gateway</link> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
342 manual pages provide information on the different commands and
343 APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
345 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
346 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
347 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
348 &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
349 &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
353 <title>Books and Articles</title>
355 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
356 maintained by the &os; Project,
357 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
358 Questions document). On-line versions of the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</link>
359 and <link xlink:href="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</link>
360 are always available from the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
361 page</link> or its mirrors. If you install the
362 <filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
363 browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular,
364 note that the Handbook contains a step-by-step guide to
365 installing &os;.</para>
367 <para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
368 the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
369 This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
370 of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
371 operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
372 Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
373 Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
374 distribution set.</para>
376 <para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
377 found in the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</link>
378 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
379 many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
380 applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
385 <sect1 xml:id="acknowledgements">
386 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
388 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
389 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
390 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
391 complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
392 <link xlink:href="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
393 to &os;</quote></link> on the &os; Web site or any of its
396 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
397 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
398 simply would not have been possible.</para>