============= About FreeBSD ============= What is FreeBSD? FreeBSD is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen "x86" based PC hardware. It works with a very wide variety of PC peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything from software development to providing professional internet services. This release of FreeBSD contains everything you need to run such a system, including full source code for everything. With the source distribution installed you can literally recompile the entire system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for students, researchers or folks who simply want to see how it all works. A large collection of ported 3rd party software (the "ports collection") is also provided to make it easier for you to obtain and install all your favorite traditional UNIX utilities for FreeBSD. Over 1300 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical applications, make FreeBSD a powerful and comprehensive operating environment that extends far beyond that provided by many commercial versions of UNIX. If you are interested in more documentation on this system we recommended that you purchase the 4.4BSD Document Set from O'Reilly Associates and the USENIX Association, ISBN 1-56592-082-1. If you are a developer, "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" by McKusick, Bostic, Karels & Quarterman, Addison-Wesley ISBN 0-201-54979-4, is also a worth-while purchase. We have no connection with O'Reilly or Addison-Wesley, we're simply satisfied customers! ========================================= Contact and technical support information ========================================= Your suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are always valued. Please do not hesitate to report any problems you may find (preferably with a fix attached, if you can :). Questions --------- For general questions, please send email to : freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Please have patience if your questions are not answered as soon as you might want. This mailing list is staffed solely by volunteers and they have real life schedules to contend with. Questions which are asked intelligently (e.g. not "My system doesn't work! What's wrong!?") also stand a far greater chance of being answered. If your question does not contain enough information to allow the responder to generate a meaningful answer, they generally won't. An informative subject line will help the people who answer the questions pick out questions they are knowledgeable about to answer. Comments and offers of help --------------------------- Since we are a volunteer effort, we are always happy to have extra hands willing to help. There are already far more desired enhancements than we'll ever be able to manage by ourselves! To contact us on technical matters or with offers of help, send mail (in English please) to: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Bugs ---- The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine with Internet mail connectivity is to use the send-pr command. If that's not possible you can use the CGI script at http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html. Bug reports will be handled by our faithful bugfiler program and you can be sure that we'll do our best to respond to all reported bugs as soon as possible. Bugs filed in this way are also visible on our WEB site in the support section and are therefore valuable both as bug reports and as "signposts" for other users concerning potential problems to watch out for. If you cannot use either of these two methods, you can send mail to: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org PLEASE ALSO BE SURE TO INDICATE WHICH VERSION OF FREEBSD YOU'RE RUNNING IN ALL BUG REPORTS OR QUESTIONS! Sorry for the use of caps, but you'd be amazed at how many times people forget this and there are many different release versions of FreeBSD out there now. It's imperative that we know what you're running so that we tell if you're suffering from a bug which has already been fixed. General Information ------------------- Please note that these mailing lists can experience *significant* amounts of traffic and if you have slow or expensive mail access and are only interested in keeping up with significant FreeBSD events, you may find it preferable to subscribe to: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org It also goes almost without saying that proper etiquette and topic discipline is essential to making sure that the FreeBSD mailing lists continue to be viable forums for communication, and your cooperation in this is kindly requested. Please read the mailing list usage charters at: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/eresources.html before posting to the FreeBSD mailing lists. WWW Resources ------------- Our WEB site, http://www.freebsd.org, is also a very good source for updated information and provides a number of advanced documentation searching facilities. If you wish to use Netscape as your browser, simply select it from the packages menu during installation or run "/stand/sysinstall configPackages" after the system is up. Several other non-commercial browsers are also available in the ports & package collection under the www category. The Handbook and FAQ are also available as on-line documents in /usr/share/doc and can be read using the ``file:/usr/share/doc'' syntax with any HTML capable browser. ================= Obtaining FreeBSD ================= You may obtain FreeBSD in a variety of ways: FTP/Mail -------- You can ftp FreeBSD and any or all of its optional packages from `ftp.freebsd.org' - the official FreeBSD release site. For other locations that mirror the FreeBSD software see the file MIRROR.SITES. Please ftp the distribution from the site closest (in networking terms) to you. Additional mirror sites are always welcome! Contact freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org for more details if you'd like to become an official mirror site. If you do not have access to the Internet and electronic mail is your only recourse, then you may still fetch the files by sending mail to `ftpmail@ftpmail.vix.com' - putting the keyword "help" in your message to get more information on how to fetch files using this mechanism. Please do note, however, that this will end up sending many *tens of megabytes* through the mail and should only be employed as an absolute LAST resort! CDROM ----- FreeBSD 2.2.x-RELEASE and 3.0-SNAPSHOT CDs may be ordered on CDROM from: Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord CA 94520 1-800-786-9907, +1-925-674-0783, +1-925-674-0821 (fax) Or via the Internet from orders@cdrom.com or http://www.cdrom.com. Their current catalog can be obtained via ftp from: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/cdrom/catalog. Cost per -RELEASE CD is $39.95 or $24.95 with a FreeBSD subscription. FreeBSD 3.0-SNAP CDs are $29.95 or $14.95 with a FreeBSD-SNAP subscription (-RELEASE and -SNAP subscriptions are entirely separate). With a subscription, you will automatically receive updates as they are released. Your credit card will be billed when each disk is shipped and you may cancel your subscription at any time without further obligation. Shipping (per order not per disc) is $5 in the US, Canada or Mexico and $9.00 overseas. They accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express or checks in U.S. Dollars and ship COD within the United States. California residents please add 8.25% sales tax. Should you be dissatisfied for any reason, the CD comes with an unconditional return policy. ================ Acknowledgments ================ FreeBSD represents the cumulative work of many dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals from around the world who have worked very hard to bring you this release. For a complete list of FreeBSD project staffers, please see: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/staff.html or, if you've loaded the doc distribution: file:/usr/share/doc/handbook/staff.html Additional FreeBSD helpers and beta testers: Coranth Gryphon Dave Rivers Kaleb S. Keithley Terry Lambert David Dawes Don Lewis Special mention to: Walnut Creek CDROM, without whose help (and continuing support) this release would never have been possible. Dermot McDonnell for his donation of a Toshiba XM3401B CDROM drive. Chuck Robey for his donation of a floppy tape streamer for testing. Larry Altneu and Wilko Bulte for providing us with Wangtek and Archive QIC-02 tape drives for testing and driver hacking. Everyone at Montana State University for their initial support. And to the many thousands of FreeBSD users and testers all over the world, without whom this release simply would not have been possible. We sincerely hope you enjoy this release of FreeBSD! The FreeBSD Project