freebsd/release/ABOUT.TXT

=============
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 :

        [email protected]

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:

        [email protected]

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:

        [email protected]

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:

                [email protected]

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 [email protected] 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 `[email protected]' - 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 [email protected] 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