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12 <title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
14 <corpauthor>The &os; Project</corpauthor>
16 <pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
20 <holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
23 <legalnotice id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
33 <para>This document gives a brief introduction to &os;
34 &release.current;. It includes some information on how to
35 obtain &os;, a listing of various ways to contact the &os;
36 Project, and pointers to some other sources of
41 <title>Introduction</title>
43 <para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os; &release.current;, the
44 latest point along the &release.branch; branch.</para>
47 <title>About &os;</title>
49 <para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
50 AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (&arch.amd64;),
51 Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC hardware (&arch.i386;),
52 Intel Itanium Processor based computers (&arch.ia64;),
53 NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (&arch.pc98;),
54 and &ultrasparc; machines (&arch.sparc64;). Versions
55 for the &arm; (&arch.arm;), &mips; (&arch.mips;), and
56 &powerpc; (&arch.powerpc;) architectures are currently under
57 development as well. &os; works with a wide variety of
58 peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything
59 from software development to games to Internet Service
62 <para>This release of &os; contains everything you need to run
63 such a system, including full source code for the kernel and
64 all utilities in the base distribution. With the source
65 distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire
66 system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for
67 students, researchers, or users who simply want to see how it
70 <para>A large collection of third-party ported software (the
71 <quote>Ports Collection</quote>) is also provided to make it
72 easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional &unix;
73 utilities for &os;. Each <quote>port</quote> consists of a
74 set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install a
75 piece of software, with a single command. Over &os.numports;
76 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
77 applications, make &os; a powerful and comprehensive operating
78 environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many
79 commercial versions of &unix;. Most ports are also available as
80 pre-compiled <quote>packages</quote>, which can be quickly
81 installed from the installation program.</para>
85 <title>Target Audience</title>
87 <![ %release.type.current; [
89 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
90 and various other users who want to get involved with the
91 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
92 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
93 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
94 work-in-progress.</para>
96 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
97 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
98 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
99 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
101 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
102 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
103 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
104 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
105 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
109 <![ %release.type.snapshot; [
111 <para>This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
112 and various other users who want to get involved with the
113 ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
114 tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
115 advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
116 work-in-progress.</para>
118 <para>The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
119 technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
120 ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
121 discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
123 <para>For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
124 in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
125 (such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
126 Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
127 checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
131 <![ %release.type.release; [
133 <para>This &release.type; of &os; is suitable for all users. It
134 has undergone a period of testing and quality assurance
135 checking to ensure the highest reliability and
136 dependability.</para>
144 <title>Obtaining &os;</title>
146 <para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
147 focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
148 complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
152 <title>CDROM and DVD</title>
154 <para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
155 from several publishers. This is frequently the most
156 convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
157 provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
158 necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
159 precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
160 Collection, or other extra material.</para>
162 <para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
163 project are listed in the <ulink
164 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
165 &os;</quote></ulink> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
171 <para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
172 optional packages from <ulink
173 url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/"></ulink>, which is the official
174 &os; release site, or any of its
175 <quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
177 <para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
179 url="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
180 Sites</ulink> section of the Handbook.
181 Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
182 download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
184 <para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
185 <email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
186 becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
187 information for mirror sites at the <ulink
188 url="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring
189 &os;</ulink> article.</para>
191 <para>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to
192 create a CDROM of a &os; release. They usually also contain
193 floppy disk images (for applicable platforms), as well as the
194 files necessary to do an installation over the network.
195 Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for
196 the most current release.</para>
200 <sect1 id="contacting">
201 <title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
204 <title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
206 <para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
207 please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
209 <para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development efforts, you
210 <emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.current;, in order to
211 keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may
212 affect the way you use and maintain the system.</para>
214 <para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os;
215 Project is always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there are already far more desired enhancements than
216 there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on
217 technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to
218 the &a.hackers;.</para>
220 <para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
221 <emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
222 have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
223 keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
224 preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
226 <para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
227 wishing to do so. Visit the <ulink url="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">
228 &os; Mailman Info Page</ulink>. This will give you more
229 information on joining the various lists, accessing archives,
230 etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special
231 interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be
232 obtained either from the Mailman pages or the <ulink
233 url="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
234 lists section</ulink> 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
258 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi">A list
259 of all active PRs</ulink> is available on the &os; Web site;
260 this list is useful to see what potential problems other users
261 have encountered.</para>
263 <para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; itself is a shell script that
264 should be easy to move even onto a non-&os; system. Using
265 this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you
266 are unable to use &man.send-pr.1; to submit a bug report, you
267 can try to send it to the &a.bugs;.</para>
269 <para>For more information, <ulink
270 url="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
271 &os; Problem Reports</quote></ulink>, available on the &os; Web
272 site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
273 effective problem reports.</para>
278 <title>Further Reading</title>
280 <para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
281 included with this distribution, while others are available
282 on-line or in print versions.</para>
284 <sect2 id="release-docs">
285 <title>Release Documentation</title>
287 <para>A number of other files provide more specific information
288 about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
289 provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
290 both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
291 (<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
292 may also include other formats such as Portable Document Format
293 (<filename>.PDF</filename>).
297 <para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
298 gives some general information about &os; as well as
299 some cursory notes about obtaining a
304 <para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
305 notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
306 &release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
307 &release.prev;).</para>
311 <para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
312 compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
313 been tested and is known to work.</para>
317 <para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
318 Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
319 this file, which is principally applicable to releases
320 (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
321 this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
322 contains the latest information on problems which have
323 been found and fixed since the release was
330 <para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
331 given release before installing it, to learn about any
332 <quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
333 The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
334 next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
335 other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
336 consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
337 release. These other copies of the errata are located at
338 <ulink url="&url.base;/releases/"></ulink> (as
339 well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
345 <title>Manual Pages</title>
347 <para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
348 with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
349 &man.man.1; command or through the <ulink
350 url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
351 pages gateway</ulink> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
352 manual pages provide information on the different commands and
353 APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
355 <para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
356 information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
357 manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
358 &man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
359 &man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
363 <title>Books and Articles</title>
365 <para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
366 maintained by the &os; Project,
367 are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
368 Questions document). On-line versions of the <ulink
369 url="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</ulink>
371 url="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</ulink>
372 are always available from the <ulink
373 url="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
374 page</ulink> 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
391 url="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</ulink>
392 of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
393 many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
394 applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
399 <sect1 id="acknowledgements">
400 <title>Acknowledgments</title>
402 <para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
403 thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
404 countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
405 complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
407 url="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
408 to &os;</quote></ulink> on the &os; Web site or any of its
411 <para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
412 and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
413 simply would not have been possible.</para>
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