The latest &os; releases are available here. Before you begin, please carefully read the installation instructions.
The &os; Handbook and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are the main documents for &os;. Essential reading, they contain a lot of material for newbies as well as advanced users. For users interested in installing a GUI, see the X Windows chapter.
Manual pages are good for reference but not always the best introduction for a novice. They generally provide information on a specific command, driver or service.
Join the &os;-Questions mailing list to see the questions you were too afraid to ask, and their answers. Subscribe by filling out the following form: http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions. You can look up old questions and answers via the search page.
The &os; Forums offer another support channel. Many users have written various tutorials and lots of new users receive help there.
You can search the Handbook and FAQ, the whole web site, or the &os; mailing list archives.
The Support page contains a wealth of information about &os;, including mailing lists, user groups, web and FTP sites, release information, and links to some sources of &unix; information.
&os; is widely used as a building block for other commercial and open-source operating systems. Some of the most widely used and publicly available systems are listed below.
FreeNAS is a storage solution that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. It uses ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data.
FuryBSD is a brand - new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays home to desktop + new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays homage to desktop BSD projects of the past PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid USB/DVD image. FuryBSD is completely free to use and distributed under the BSD license.
GhostBSD is derived from &os;, GhostBSD uses the GTK environment to provide a beautiful looks and comfortable experience on the modern BSD platform offering a natural and native &unix; work environment.
MidnightBSD is a BSD-derived operating system developed with desktop users in mind. It includes all the software you'd expect for your daily tasks: mail, web browsing, word processing, gaming, and much more.
pfSense is a &os; based network security solution. pfSense software, with the help of the package system, is able to provide the same functionality or more of common commercial firewalls, without any of the artificial limitations. It has successfully replaced every big name commercial firewall you can imagine in numerous installations around the world.
Everyone has something to contribute to the &os; community, even newbies! Some are busy working with the new advocacy group and some have become involved with the Documentation Project as reviewers. Other &os; newbies might have particular skills and experiences to share, either computer related or not, or just want to meet new newbies and make them feel welcome. There are always people around who help others simply because they like to.
Friends who run &os; are a great resource. No book can replace chatting on the phone or across a pizza with someone who has the same interests, enjoys similar accomplishments, and faces the same challenges. If you do not have many friends who use &os;, consider using your old &os; CDs to create some more.
User groups are good places to meet other &os; users. If there is no one nearby, you might consider starting one!
For more information on getting involved in the community, see the Contributing to &os; article.
Index: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/where.xml =================================================================== --- head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/where.xml (revision 54104) +++ head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/where.xml (revision 54105) @@ -1,659 +1,659 @@ ]>Most users of &os; will have hardware for either the amd64, i386, or armv6 architectures.
Modern PCs use the amd64 architecture, including those with Intel® branded processors. Computers with more than 3 GB of memory should use amd64. If the computer is an older, 32-bit only model, use i386. For embedded devices and single-board computers (SBC) such as the Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone Black, Panda Board, and Zed Board, use the armv6 SD card image which supports ARMv6 and ARMv7 processors.
All other users should reference the complete list of supported &os; platforms.
The &os; installer can be downloaded in a number of different formats including CD (disc1), DVD (dvd1), and Network Install (bootonly) sized ISO Disc Images, as well as regular and mini USB memory stick images. Recent versions of &os; are also offered as prebuilt expandable Virtual Machine images, and as SD Card images for embedded platforms.
While &os; does not gather deployment statistics, having statistical information available is essential. Please consider installing the sysutils/bsdstats package, which collects hardware and software statistics, helping developers understand how to best focus their efforts. The information collected is available at the bsdstats.org website.
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If you are interested in a purely experimental snapshot release of &os;-CURRENT (AKA &rel.head;-CURRENT), aimed at developers and bleeding-edge testers only, then please see the &os; Snapshot Releases page. For more information about past, present and future releases in general, please visit the release information page.
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If you plan on getting &os; via HTTP or FTP, please check the listing of mirror sites in the Handbook to see if there is a site closer to you.
There are many options for installing &os;, including installation from CD-ROM, DVD, USB Memory Stick or even directly using anonymous FTP, HTTP, or NFS. Please read through the &os; installation guide before downloading the entire &os; distribution.
&os; can be acquired on CD-ROM or DVD from FreeBSD Mall, or one of the other CD-ROM and DVD Publishers.
For downloading past releases, please visit the FTP archive.
&os; is widely used as a building block for other commercial and open-source operating systems. The projects below are widely used and of particular interest to &os; users.
FreeNAS is an open source storage platform based on &os; and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
FuryBSD is a brand - new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays home to desktop + new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays homage to desktop BSD projects of the past PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid USB/DVD image. FuryBSD is completely free to use and distributed under the BSD license.
GhostBSD is derived from &os;, GhostBSD uses the GTK environment to provide a beautiful looks and comfortable experience on the modern BSD platform offering a natural and native &unix; work environment.
MidnightBSD is a BSD-derived operating system developed with desktop users in mind. It includes all the software you'd expect for your daily tasks: mail, web browsing, word processing, gaming, and much more.
pfSense is a &os; based customized distribution tailored for use as a firewall and router.
The &os; Ports Collection is a diverse collection of utility and application software that has been ported to &os;.
See Installing Applications: Packages and Ports in the Handbook.
For information about how you can contribute your favorite piece of software to the Ports Collection, have a look at The Porter's Handbook and the article Contributing to &os;.