FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Announcement
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 16:19:57 -0700
From: Scott Long <scottl@FreeBSD.org>
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Announcement
It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE. This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. Some of the many changes since 5.2.1 include:
A binary compatibility interface has been introduced for the i386 platform that allows running Microsoft Windows NDIS network drivers natively in the kernel.
The network and socket subsystems are now multi-threaded and reentrant. This allows for much better use of SMP parallelism when processing and forwarding local and remote network traffic.
The development environment has been updated to GCC 3.4.2, Binutils 2.15, and GDB 6.1
The choices for graphical environments have been updated to include X.org 6.7, Gnome 2.6.2 and KDE 3.3.0.
There has also been a significant focus on testing and bug-fixing with this release, as well as the freezing of most kernel and userland APIs. Users and vendors are encouraged to consider transitioning to it as FreeBSD 5.x is no longer considered a 'New Technology' release series. Information on migrating from FreeBSD 4.x to 5.x can be found at
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.3R/migration-guide.html
For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes and errata list, available at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.3R/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.3R/errata.html
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:
Availability
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64, amd64, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using bootable media 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 5.3 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 the following sites. MD5 checksums for the release images are included at the bottom of this message.
Bittorrent
Bittorrent distribution is being tested on an experimental basis. A collection of trackers for the release ISO images is available at
http://people.freebsd.org/~scottl/5.3-torrent
FTP
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, Amylonia, 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 5.3 including The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, Sandvine, Inc., FreeBSD Systems, Inc, and NTT/Verio.
The release engineering team for 5.3-RELEASE includes:
| Scott Long <scottl@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, I386 and AMD64 Release Building |
| Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org> | I386 and Sparc64 Release, Building, Mirror Site Coordination |
| Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, Documentation and Coordination |
| Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, Security |
| John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering |
| Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering |
| Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@FreeBSD.org> | IA64 Release Building |
| Takahashi Yoshihiro <nyan@FreeBSD.org> | PC98 Release Building |
| Wilko Bulte <wilko@FreeBSD.org> | Alpha Release Building |
| Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar@FreeBSD.org> | Security Officer |
CD Image Checksums
For Alpha:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-alpha-bootonly.iso) = 82fd65e9cfdb6431934d0f1c1b6a15a3 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-alpha-disc1.iso) = f7d2267e623be6e7409c119b46982061 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-alpha-disc2.iso) = 26ab899510752a05bf0019529b3ae09e MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-alpha-miniinst.iso) = 3cc9b2881ea519027fbec6f95ab2ea84
For amd64:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso) = 3b13650ee101461d55233d2648402cfd MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-amd64-disc2.iso) = f35d3c6f46499ffab755ccf9b63cd558 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-amd64-miniinst.iso) = 1efce73bf26984feb6128518b225ad7e MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) = 22894ae0c26f03537608d06815700148
For i386:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso) = e370ae39bb34f0789c638b6ad50038a2 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso) = fbcbfdff31f27de396f257e0a37a78b8 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso) = 21874a5663022768336e4cc73d1dd30d MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-i386-miniinst.iso) = 96124b2608ba481693e04d364d485e3c
For ia64:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-ia64-bootonly.iso) = 2e5dfceb79b2975885cab6b318c965b8 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-ia64-disc1.iso) = 61b5bc276bf2b75aed0908802ea12926 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-ia64-disc2.iso) = 02613e71ea7e04c43f75a8feccb0bdfa MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-ia64-miniinst.iso) = 709233fd711756966f298e31bcab4e45
For pc98:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-pc98-disc2.iso) = 373ddc67857b90b34190ad07a23e5298 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-pc98-miniinst.iso) = 01735af51f7b7f6ce37314e5ec49a842
For sparc64:
MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-sparc64-bootonly.iso)= db98df3d41cb20d6cdac668125736880 MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-sparc64-disc1.iso) = cd960f33a4e4ae33628b28580900932a MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-sparc64-disc2.iso) = 058c9fce47fec044e6be91773532293a MD5 (5.3-RELEASE-sparc64-miniinst.iso)= 05eb044da17fda978f88716a8203be3d