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A Developer Preview release of FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT is now available
for widespread testing. This preview is a significant milestone
towards the eventual release of FreeBSD 5.0 in late 2002. Some of the
many new features that are available in this snapshot are listed
below:
* SMP support has been largely reworked, incorporating code from
BSD/OS 5.0 (in progress).
* The random(4) device has been rewritten to use the Yarrow
algorithm. It harvests entropy from a variety of interrupt
sources (hardware devices) to provide the entropy required by
strong cryptography.
* Support for 32-bit Cardbus devices has been added for mobile
computers (NEWCARD).
* Significant security enhancements have been made throughout the
system, including a reworked PAM implementation, ACLs, and fewer
privileged programs in the base system.
* An implementation of scheduler activations has been added to
the kernel to more efficiently handle multi-threaded
programs. (in progress).
* A device filesystem has been added to allow entries in the /dev
directory to be automatically attached. Among other benefits,
devfs provides better support for attaching and detaching
peripheral devices.
* Support for the sparc64 architecture, including most modern
workstations and entry level servers from Sun Microsystems (and
possibly clones from Tatung, and others).
* FFS snapshots and background fsck(8).
***************************** WARNING ********************************
This is a development snapshot, and may include serious software
bugs. Do not install this on a machine where important data may be
put at risk. In addition, a number of debugging options are turned on
by default, so the poor performance of this snapshot should not set
expectations for the final release of 5.0.
**********************************************************************
That said, we have done our best to provide a stable system for
developers and power-users to help test the new functionality in 5.0.
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/DP1/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP1/errata.html
Availability
------------
5.0-DP1 is available for the i386, alpha, and sparc64 architectures
and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or
copied to a local NFS/FTP server.
If you can't afford the CDs, are impatient, or just want to use it
for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISOs,
otherwise please continue to support the FreeBSD project by purchasing
media from one of our supporting vendors. This Developer Preview
release is available on CD-ROM from the FreeBSD Mall.
http://www.FreeBSDMall.com/
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, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania,
Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Taiwan, Thailand, the Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United
States.
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.
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://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp5.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
See the FreeBSD Handbook for additional information about FreeBSD mirror
sites.
Acknowledgments
---------------
Finally, we would like to thank the developers, users, and companies
that continue to make FreeBSD releases possible.
Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to
finance our ongoing release engineering activities, including Compaq,
Yahoo!, and The FreeBSD Mall.
I couldn't possibly list all of the people that have helped make 5.0
DP1 a reality, but the following people deserve to be singled
out. Will Andrews, Kris Kennaway, Steve Price, and the rest of the
Ports team did an incredible job fixing hundreds of third-party
packages. Robert Watson and Bruce A. Mah did an excellent job writing
up the errata file, helping to decide what changes should be made
specifically for this DP release, and much more. Jake Burkholder acted
not only as lead developer for the sparc64 port, but also as package
builder and release engineer! David O'Brien helped integrate XFree86
4.2 into this snapshot.
Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work that went into
polishing the FreeBSD -CURRENT development branch over the past
month. I would also like to thank the FreeBSD Committers
(committers@FreeBSD.org), without whom there would be nothing to
release, and the many thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who
contributed bug fixes, features and suggestions.
Above all else, remember that this is a work in progress. Please
help us find bugs now, so that 5.0-RELEASE will be that much better.
Thanks!
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FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #1
