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FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Announcement

Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 09:36:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott Long <scottl@FreeBSD.org>
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] ]FreeBSD 5.1 Released!

It is my great privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE. This release continues FreeBSD on the path of advanced multiprocessor and application thread support and includes many improved and widely-sought features:

  • Experimental 1:1 and M:N thread libraries provide kernel support for efficient application multithreading.
  • Support for Physical Address Extensions enables Pentium Pro and higher CPUs to access up to 64GB of RAM.
  • Experimental Name Service Switch infrastructure allows enterprises to seamlessly integrate with LDAP and Active Directory services.
  • Enhanced "jail" management, allowing one server to provide many different "virtual machines" with reduced administrator workload.
  • New device drivers include support for IBM/Adaptec ServeRAID controllers, expanded support for USB 2.0 and USB Ethernet adapters, and Promise Serial ATA controllers.
  • Experimental support for the amd64 platform allows FreeBSD to run on single processor AMD Opteron systems.

Although stability is greatly improved and many bugs have been fixed, FreeBSD 5.1 might 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/5.1R/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/5.1R/relnotes.html

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.1R/errata.html

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

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

This release is dedicated to the memory of Alan Eldridge. Alan was a talented and dedicated member of the KDE On FreeBSD team and the FreeBSD community, and his passing is mourned by all of us. For more information, please see http://freebsd.kde.org/memoriam/alane.php.

Availability

FreeBSD 5.1-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 5.1 based products:

FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/
Daemonnews, Inc. http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html

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:

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, Saraville, 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 5.1 including The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, and NTT/Verio.

The release engineering team for 5.1-RELEASE includes:

Scott Long <scottl@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, IA32 and Alpha Release Building
Bruce A. Mah <bmah@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, Documentation
Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering, Security
John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering
Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> Release Engineering
Bill Fenner <fenner@FreeBSD.org> Sparc64 Release Building
Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@FreeBSD.org> IA64 Release Building
Peter Wemm <peter@FreeBSD.org> AMD64 Release Building
Takahashi Yoshihiro <nyan@FreeBSD.org> PC98 Release Building
Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> Package Building
Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar@FreeBSD.org> Security Officer