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<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>
<year>2015</year>
<year>2016</year>
<year>2017</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;), 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 connectivity is to use the
<application>Bugzilla</application> bug tracker.
<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="https://bugs.FreeBSD.org/search/">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; is deprecated.</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>).</para>
<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>On platforms that support &man.bsdinstall.8; (currently
&arch.amd64;, &arch.i386;, 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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