FreeBSD 2.0 Announcement
To: [email protected]
Subject: 2.0 RELEASE is now available on ftp.freebsd.org!
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 06:35:37 -0800
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <[email protected]>
The FreeBSD Project team is very pleased to announce their release of FreeBSD 2.0; a full 32 bit 4.4 BSD Lite based operating system for Intel PCs (i386, i486 and Pentium class).
Since our first release of FreeBSD 1.0 some 18 months ago, FreeBSD has changed almost entirely. A new port from the Berkeley 4.4 code base was done, which brought the legal status of the system out of the shadows with the blessing of Novell (new owners of USL and UNIX). The port to 4.4 also brought in a host of new features, filesystems and enhanced driver support. With our new unencumbered code base, we have every reason to hope that we'll be able to release quality operating systems without further legal encumbrance for some time to come!
FreeBSD 2.0 represents the culmination of almost 2 years of work and many thousands of man hours put in by an international development team. We hope you enjoy it!
FreeBSD 2.0 also features an advanced installation that enables one to install from tape, CD, NFS or FTP over SLIP, ethernet or the parallel port, and DOS floppies or hard disk partitions. This is, we feel, our easiest to use installation yet! Many many suggestions from the previous 2.0 ALPHA release were incorporated, and RELEASE is now far less dangerous [we hope :-)]than ALPHA was!
FreeBSD 2.0 also supports more friendly co-habitation with other operating systems, allowing you to easily mount DOS filesystems and install a multi-OS boot manager without having to leave the installation utility. All planned installation methods are now also supported. A trouble-shooting guide for those in, well, trouble may also be of help and is featured on the boot floppy.
For more information on what's new with FreeBSD, or what general features it offers, we strongly suggest that you simply download our boot floppy and boot from it. You can easily read the release notes on it using a simple menu, and with no danger to the contents of your hard disk (unless you deliberately chose "proceed with installation", in which case your fate is in your own hands! :-).
An upgrade path from ALPHA->RELEASE will also be provided shortly for the benefit of those who were kind enough to help us test the early snapshot of 2.0. Watch the announce list for its availability, or simply be impatient and extract the 2.0R bindist over your ALPHA one! :-)
Those wishing to obtain this version of 2.0 on CDROM should contact our sponsors, Walnut Creek CDROM ([email protected]) or any of the other CD vendors who will, no doubt, be doing their own releases.
If you're currently running 1.x and are looking for an upgrade path, we're sorry to say that only full installations are supported at this time. Simply back up your password and user files before reinstalling from the 2.0 media, then bring them back. If public demand is high enough, and we can figure out a way of easily doing it, we'll offer something, but it should be understood that the differences between 1.x and 2.0 are *large*, and it's not certain that we'll be able to do it at all.
Those unable or unwilling to download the boot floppy may also get the release notes by mail - send mail to <[email protected]> for an automated reply. Updated information will also be provided on a more or less continuous basis in our WEB pages:
http://www.freebsd.org
FreeBSD 2.0 RELEASE is or will be available for ftp in the following locations:
- Primary ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- U.S-2 ftp://ftp.dataplex.net/pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- U.S-3 ftp://kryten.atinc.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- U.S-4 ftp://ref.tfs.com/pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- Taiwan ftp://netbsd.csie.nctu.edu.tw/pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- Australia ftp://ftp.physics.usyd.edu.au/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- France ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/freeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- Finland ftp://nic.funet.fi:/pub/unix/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
- Russia ftp://ftp.kiae.su/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE
(Translated for the non-URL literate: FreeBSD is available for anonymous ftp on ftp.freebsd.org in the pub/FreeBSD/2.0-RELEASE directory)
It will also, no doubt, be available on a number of mirror sites as soon as they pick it up. However, ftp.freebsd.org is on a T3 line and supports 300 simultaneous users (it's a FreeBSD machine :-), so it's unlikely that you'll have too much trouble getting it from this site until the mirrors do so.
If you are directly Internet connected, it is also NOT necessary to load the bindist from this site! Simply download the 2 boot floppies, begin the installation, and select the FTP installation method - it will do the rest for you, transparently.
Finally, we'd like to publically *thank* Walnut Creek CDROM, without whos continuing support and extreme generousity, we'd probably be long gone! They've been of immense help to us.
Thanks must also go to Poul-Henning Kamp, our fearless and long suffering release engineer for 2.0. While all of us have sacrificed much sleep to the cause, he has a new wife but has somehow managed to do so as well! :-)
And to all of our users (this is probably starting to sound like the academy awards :-), a similar thank you! We couldn't have done it without your constant flow of commentary, patches, donations of code and moral support. As corny as it sounds, we do it all for you folks! [Though the ego gratification is nice too :-)]
Thanks to all, and we sincerely hope you enjoy this release!
Comments, as always, to [email protected].
Jordan
[on behalf of the FreeBSD Project team]