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    		<h2>What is FreeBSD?</h2>

		      <p>FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86
			compatible (including Pentium&reg; and Athlon&trade;), amd64
			compatible (including Opteron&trade;, Athlon&trade;64,
			and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, PC-98 and UltraSPARC&reg;
			architectures.  It is derived from BSD, the version of
			&unix; developed at the
			University of California, Berkeley.  It is developed
			and maintained by <a
			  href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributors/staff-committers.html">a
			large team of individuals</a>. Additional <a
			  href="&base;/platforms/index.html">platforms</a> are
			in various stages of development.</p>

		      <h2>Cutting edge features</h2>

		      <p>FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security
			and compatibility
			<a href="&base;/features.html">features</a>
			today which are still missing in other operating systems,
			even some of the best commercial ones.</p>

		      <h2>Powerful Internet solutions</h2>

		      <p>FreeBSD makes an ideal
			<a href="&base;/internet.html">Internet or Intranet</a>
			server. It provides robust network services under the heaviest
			loads and uses memory efficiently to maintain good response
			times for thousands of simultaneous user processes.</p>

		      <h2>Advanced Embedded Platform</h2>
			<p>FreeBSD brings advanced network operating system
			  features to appliance and embedded platforms, from
			  higher-end Intel-based appliances to Arm, PowerPC,
			  and shortly MIPS hardware platforms.  From
			  mail and web appliances to routers, time servers,
			  and wireless access points, vendors around the
			  world rely on FreeBSD's integrated build and
			  cross-build environments and advanced features as
			  the foundation for their embedded products.  And
			  the Berkeley open source license lets them decide
			  how many of their local changes they want to
			  contribute back.</p>

		      <h2>Run a huge number of
			  applications</h2>

		      <p>With over 20,000 ported libraries and <a
			href="&base;/applications.html">applications</a>,
			FreeBSD supports applications for desktop, server,
			appliance, and embedded environments.</p>

		      <h2>Easy to install</h2>

		      <p>FreeBSD can be installed from a variety of media
			including CD-ROM, DVD, or directly over the network
			using FTP or NFS.  All you need are
			<a
			  href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html">these
			directions</a>.</p>

		      <h2>FreeBSD is <i>free</i></h2>

		      <a href="&base;/copyright/daemon.html"><img src="gifs/dae_up3.gif" alt="The BSD Daemon" height="81" width="72" align="right" border="0"></a>

		      <p>While you might expect an operating system with these
			features to sell for a high price, FreeBSD is available
			<a href="&base;/copyright/index.html">free of charge</a>
			and comes with full source code. If you would like to
			purchase or download a copy to try out,
			<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors.html">more
			  information is available</a>.</p>

		      <h2>Contributing to FreeBSD</h2>

		      <p>It is easy to contribute to FreeBSD. All you need to do
			is find a part of FreeBSD which you think could be
			improved and make those changes (carefully and cleanly)
			and submit that back to the Project by means of send-pr
			or a committer, if you know one.  This could be anything
			from documentation to artwork to source code. See the
			<a href="&base;/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing/index.html">Contributing
			  to FreeBSD</a> article for more information.</p>

		      <p>Even if you are not a programmer, there are other
	 		ways to contribute to FreeBSD. The <a
			  href="http://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org">FreeBSD
			  Foundation</a> is a non-profit organization for which
	 		direct contributions are fully tax deductible.  Please
	 		contact <a
			  href="mailto:board&#64;FreeBSDFoundation.org">board&#64;FreeBSDFoundation.org</a>
	 		for more information or write to: The FreeBSD
	 		Foundation, P.O. Box 20247, Boulder, CO 80308,
 		USA.</p>

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