FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE Announcement

Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 10:03:42 -0700
From: scottl@FreeBSD.org (Scott Long)
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: FreeBSD 5.0 Release Available

It is my privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE. The culmination of nearly three years of work, this release starts FreeBSD on the path of advanced multiprocessor and application thread support and introduces support for the sparc64 and ia64 platforms. Among the long list of new and improved features:

• UFS2, the second generation UFS filesystem, shatters the current 1TB filesystem barrier.
• Background filesystem checking (bgfsck) and filesystem snapshots eliminate the need for downtime to do filesystem repair and backup tasks.
• Experimental support for Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) provide an extensible and flexible means for administrators to define system security policies.
• Fine-grained locking in the kernel paves the road for much higher efficiency of multi-processor systems.
• Support for Bluetooth, ACPI, CardBus, IEEE 1394, and experimental hardware crypto acceleration keeps FreeBSD at the forefront of new technology.
• The GCC 3.2.1 compiler provides the latest installment of the ever-improving GNU Compiler Collection.
• GEOM, the extensible and flexible storage framework, and DEVFS, the device virtual filesystem, simplify storage and device management while opening the door for new enterprise storage technologies.
• Support for the sparc64 and ia64 platforms expands FreeBSD's support of advanced 64-bit computing platforms.

Although FreeBSD 5.0 contains a number of new and exciting features, it may not be suitable for all users. More conservative users may prefer to continue using FreeBSD 4.X. Information on the various trade-offs involved, as well as some notes on future plans for both FreeBSD 4.X and 5.X, can be found in the Early Adopter's Guide, available here:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/early-adopter.html

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/relnotes.html

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:

http://www.freebsd.org/releng/

Availability

FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for all architectures are available now.

Please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following companies will be offering FreeBSD 5.0 based products:

If you can't afford FreeBSD on media, are impatient, or just want to use it for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO images. We can't promise that all the mirror sites will carry the larger ISO images, but they will at least be available from:

• ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp12.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp.tw.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp2.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp3.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp4.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp5.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp.cz.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp7.de.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp.lt.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp2.za.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp.se.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp1.ru.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp2.ru.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
• ftp://ftp4.ru.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/

FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Before trying the central FTP site, please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:

ftp://ftp.<yourdomain>.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD

Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.

More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The FreeBSD Handbook. It provides a complete installation walk-through for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

Acknowledgments

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 5.0 including The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, and NTT/Verio.

The release engineering team for 5.0-RELEASE includes: