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<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0">
<info><title>&os; &release.current; README</title>
<author><orgname>The &os; Project</orgname></author>
<pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
<copyright>
<year>2000</year>
<year>2001</year>
<year>2002</year>
<year>2003</year>
<year>2004</year>
<year>2005</year>
<year>2006</year>
<year>2007</year>
<year>2008</year>
<year>2009</year>
<year>2010</year>
<year>2011</year>
<year>2012</year>
<year>2013</year>
<year>2014</year>
<holder role="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">The &os; Documentation Project</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice xml:id="trademarks" role="trademarks">
&tm-attrib.freebsd;
&tm-attrib.intel;
&tm-attrib.opengroup;
&tm-attrib.sparc;
&tm-attrib.general;
</legalnotice>
<abstract>
<para>This document gives a brief introduction to &os;
&release.current;. It includes some information on how to
obtain &os;, a listing of various ways to contact the &os;
Project, and pointers to some other sources of
information.</para>
</abstract>
</info>
<sect1 xml:id="intro">
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>This distribution is a &release.type; of &os; &release.current;, the
latest point along the &release.branch; branch.</para>
<sect2>
<title>About &os;</title>
<para>&os; is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for
AMD64 and Intel EM64T based PC hardware (&arch.amd64;),
Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen <quote>x86</quote> based PC hardware (&arch.i386;),
NEC PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (&arch.pc98;),
and &ultrasparc; machines (&arch.sparc64;). Versions
for the &arm; (&arch.arm;), &mips; (&arch.mips;), and
&powerpc; (&arch.powerpc;) architectures are currently under
development as well. &os; works with a wide variety of
peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything
from software development to games to Internet Service
Provision.</para>
<para>This release of &os; contains everything you need to run
such a system, including full source code for the kernel and
all utilities in the base distribution. With the source
distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire
system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for
students, researchers, or users who simply want to see how it
all works.</para>
<para>A large collection of third-party ported software (the
<quote>Ports Collection</quote>) is also provided to make it
easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional &unix;
utilities for &os;. Each <quote>port</quote> consists of a
set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install a
piece of software, with a single command. Over &os.numports;
ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
applications, make &os; a powerful and comprehensive operating
environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many
commercial versions of &unix;. Most ports are also available as
pre-compiled <quote>packages</quote>, which can be quickly
installed from the installation program.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Target Audience</title>
<para releasetype="current">This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
and various other users who want to get involved with the
ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
work-in-progress.</para>
<para releasetype="current">The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
<para releasetype="current">For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
(such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
<para releasetype="snapshot">This &release.type; is aimed primarily at early adopters
and various other users who want to get involved with the
ongoing development of &os;. While the &os; development team
tries its best to ensure that each &release.type; works as
advertised, &release.branch; is very much a
work-in-progress.</para>
<para releasetype="snapshot">The basic requirements for using this &release.type; are
technical proficiency with &os; and an understanding of the
ongoing development process of &os; &release.branch; (as
discussed on the &a.current;).</para>
<para releasetype="snapshot">For those more interested in doing business with &os; than
in experimenting with new &os; technology, formal releases
(such as &release.prev.stable;) are frequently more appropriate.
Releases undergo a period of testing and quality assurance
checking to ensure high reliability and dependability.</para>
<para releasetype="release">This &release.type; of &os; is suitable for all users. It
has undergone a period of testing and quality assurance
checking to ensure the highest reliability and
dependability.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 xml:id="obtain">
<title>Obtaining &os;</title>
<para>&os; may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section
focuses on those ways that are primarily useful for obtaining a
complete &os; distribution, rather than updating an existing
installation.</para>
<sect2>
<title>CDROM and DVD</title>
<para>&os; -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD
from several publishers. This is frequently the most
convenient way to obtain &os; for new installations, as it
provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional,
precompiled <quote>packages</quote> from the &os; Ports
Collection, or other extra material.</para>
<para>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the
project are listed in the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors.html"><quote>Obtaining
&os;</quote></link> appendix to the Handbook.</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>FTP</title>
<para>You can use FTP to retrieve &os; and any or all of its
optional packages from <uri xlink:href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/</uri>, which is the official
&os; release site, or any of its
<quote>mirrors</quote>.</para>
<para>Lists of locations that mirror &os; can be found in the
<link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/mirrors-ftp.html">FTP
Sites</link> section of the Handbook.
Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to
download the distribution is highly recommended.</para>
<para>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact
<email>freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</email> for more details on
becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
information for mirror sites at the <link xlink:href="&url.articles.hubs;/">Mirroring
&os;</link> article.</para>
<para>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to
create a CDROM of a &os; release. They usually also contain
floppy disk images (for applicable platforms), as well as the
files necessary to do an installation over the network.
Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for
the most current release.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 xml:id="contacting">
<title>Contacting the &os; Project</title>
<sect2>
<title>Email and Mailing Lists</title>
<para>For any questions or general technical support issues,
please send mail to the &a.questions;.</para>
<para>If you're tracking the &release.branch; development efforts, you
<emphasis>must</emphasis> join the &a.current;, in order to
keep abreast of recent developments and changes that may
affect the way you use and maintain the system.</para>
<para>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the &os;
Project is always happy to have extra hands willing to help—there are already far more desired enhancements than
there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on
technical matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to
the &a.hackers;.</para>
<para>Please note that these mailing lists can experience
<emphasis>significant</emphasis> amounts of traffic. If you
have slow or expensive mail access, or are only interested in
keeping up with major &os; events, you may find it
preferable to subscribe instead to the &a.announce;.</para>
<para>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone
wishing to do so. Visit the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/mailman/listinfo">
&os; Mailman Info Page</link>. This will give you more
information on joining the various lists, accessing archives,
etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special
interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be
obtained either from the Mailman pages or the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/support.html#mailing-list">mailing
lists section</link> of the &os; Web site.</para>
<important>
<para>Do <emphasis>not</emphasis> send email to the lists
asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface
instead.</para>
</important>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Submitting Problem Reports</title>
<para>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are
always valued—please do not hesitate to report any
problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
course even more welcome.</para>
<para>The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine
with Internet mail connectivity is to use the &man.send-pr.1;
command.
<quote>Problem Reports</quote> (PRs) submitted in this way
will be filed and their progress tracked; the &os; developers
will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as
possible. <link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi">A list
of all active PRs</link> is available on the &os; Web site;
this list is useful to see what potential problems other users
have encountered.</para>
<para>Note that &man.send-pr.1; itself is a shell script that
should be easy to move even onto a non-&os; system. Using
this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you
are unable to use &man.send-pr.1; to submit a bug report, you
can try to send it to the &a.bugs;.</para>
<para>For more information, <link xlink:href="&url.articles.problem-reports;/"><quote>Writing
&os; Problem Reports</quote></link>, available on the &os; Web
site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
effective problem reports.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 xml:id="seealso">
<title>Further Reading</title>
<para>There are many sources of information about &os;; some are
included with this distribution, while others are available
on-line or in print versions.</para>
<sect2 xml:id="release-docs">
<title>Release Documentation</title>
<para>A number of other files provide more specific information
about this &release.type; distribution. These files are
provided in various formats. Most distributions will include
both ASCII text (<filename>.TXT</filename>) and HTML
(<filename>.HTM</filename>) renditions. Some distributions
may also include other formats such as Portable Document Format
(<filename>.PDF</filename>).
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para><filename>README.TXT</filename>: This file, which
gives some general information about &os; as well as
some cursory notes about obtaining a
distribution.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><filename>RELNOTES.TXT</filename>: The release
notes, showing what's new and different in &os;
&release.current; compared to the previous release (&os;
&release.prev;).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><filename>HARDWARE.TXT</filename>: The hardware
compatibility list, showing devices with which &os; has
been tested and is known to work.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><filename>ERRATA.TXT</filename>: Release errata.
Late-breaking, post-release information can be found in
this file, which is principally applicable to releases
(as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult
this file before installing a release of &os;, as it
contains the latest information on problems which have
been found and fixed since the release was
created.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>On platforms that support &man.bsdinstall.8; (currently
&arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;, &arch.pc98;, and &arch.sparc64;), these documents are generally available via the
Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is
installed, you can revisit this menu by re-running the
&man.bsdinstall.8; utility.</para>
<note>
<para>It is extremely important to read the errata for any
given release before installing it, to learn about any
<quote>late-breaking news</quote> or post-release problems.
The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but
other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should be
consulted as the <quote>current errata</quote> for this
release. These other copies of the errata are located at
<uri xlink:href="&url.base;/releases/">&url.base;/releases/</uri> (as
well as any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this
location).</para>
</note>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Manual Pages</title>
<para>As with almost all &unix; like operating systems, &os; comes
with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the
&man.man.1; command or through the <link xlink:href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi">hypertext manual
pages gateway</link> on the &os; Web site. In general, the
manual pages provide information on the different commands and
APIs available to the &os; user.</para>
<para>In some cases, manual pages are written to give
information on particular topics. Notable examples of such
manual pages are &man.tuning.7; (a guide to performance tuning),
&man.security.7; (an introduction to &os; security), and
&man.style.9; (a style guide to kernel coding).</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Books and Articles</title>
<para>Two highly-useful collections of &os;-related information,
maintained by the &os; Project,
are the &os; Handbook and &os; FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions document). On-line versions of the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/">Handbook</link>
and <link xlink:href="&url.books.faq;/">FAQ</link>
are always available from the <link xlink:href="&url.base;/docs.html">&os; Documentation
page</link> or its mirrors. If you install the
<filename>doc</filename> distribution set, you can use a Web
browser to read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular,
note that the Handbook contains a step-by-step guide to
installing &os;.</para>
<para>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by
the &os; Project, cover more-specialized, &os;-related topics.
This material spans a wide range of topics, from effective use
of the mailing lists, to dual-booting &os; with other
operating systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the
Handbook and FAQ, these documents are available from the &os;
Documentation Page or in the <filename>doc</filename>
distribution set.</para>
<para>A listing of other books and documents about &os; can be
found in the <link xlink:href="&url.books.handbook;/bibliography.html">bibliography</link>
of the &os; Handbook. Because of &os;'s strong &unix; heritage,
many other articles and books written for &unix; systems are
applicable as well, some of which are also listed in the
bibliography.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 xml:id="acknowledgements">
<title>Acknowledgments</title>
<para>&os; represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not
thousands, of individuals from around the world who have worked
countless hours to bring about this &release.type;. For a
complete list of &os; developers and contributors, please see
<link xlink:href="&url.articles.contributors;/"><quote>Contributors
to &os;</quote></link> on the &os; Web site or any of its
mirrors.</para>
<para>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of &os; users
and testers all over the world, without whom this &release.type;
simply would not have been possible.</para>
</sect1>
</article>
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