I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, the
very latest release on the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since
FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE in January 2002, we have made hundreds of fixes,
updated many system components, and addressed a wide variety of
security issues.

One of the most significant changes in FreeBSD 4.6 is the adoption of
XFree86 4.2.0 as the default version of the X Windows System. We
encourage users (particularly those upgrading from older installations
of XFree86) to consult the relevant section of the FreeBSD Handbook
for information on installing and configuring XFree86 4.2.0. This
information can be found on-line at:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/x11.html

On systems with the doc distribution installed, it can also be found
at:

/usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11.html

A number of enhancements to network device drivers have been made, as
well as updates to the ATA storage subsystem.

Some contributed programs have been updated, such as sendmail
(updated to 8.12.3) and the ISC DHCP client (updated to 3.0.1RC8).

For more information about the most significant changes with this
release of FreeBSD, please see the release notes:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/relnotes.html

It is also useful to peruse the errata file, as it contains
late-breaking news about the release:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities
(including a schedule of upcoming releases), please see:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/


Availability
------------

FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE supports the i386 and alpha architectures and can
be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied
to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for the i386 are available
now. Final builds for the alpha architecture are in progress and will
be made available shortly.

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://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.lt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/FreeBSD/

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, otherwise please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by
purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following
companies have contributed substantially to the development of
FreeBSD:

FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/
FreeBSD Services Ltd. http://www.freebsd-services.com/
Daemon News http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html

Each CD or DVD set contains the FreeBSD installation and application
package bits for the i386 ("PC") architecture. For a set of distfiles
used to build ports in the ports collection, please see the FreeBSD
Toolkit, a 6 CD set containing extra bits which no longer fit on the 4
CD set, or the DVD distribution from FreeBSD Services Ltd.

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,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Taiwan, Thailand, Trantor, 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/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/handbook/install.html


Acknowledgments
---------------

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to
finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 4.6, including
Compaq, Yahoo!, and The FreeBSD Mall.

In addition to myself, the release engineering team for 4.6-RELEASE
includes:

Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> : Release Engineering Lead, i386 Builds
Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> : Release Engineering
John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> : Release Engineering, alpha Builds
Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org> : Release Engineering
Steve Price <steve@FreeBSD.org> : Package Splits
Will Andrews <will@FreeBSD.org> : Package Splits
Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> : Package Building
David O'Brien <obrien@FreeBSD.org> : XFree86 Integration

Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work which went into
making this release. Many thanks are also due to the FreeBSD
committers <committers@FreeBSD.org>, without whom there would be
nothing to release, and thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who
have contributed bug fixes, features, and suggestions.

Enjoy!