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...ly-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:

   ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp12.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp{2,3,4,5}.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp7.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp.lt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp2.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp.se.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
   ftp://ftp{1,2,4}.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/

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.../mirrors-ftp.ht
ml

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...ok/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( at )FreeBSD.org>         Release Engineering,
                                          IA32 and Alpha Release Building
  Bruce A. Mah <bmah( at )FreeBSD.org>         Release Engineering, Documentation
  Robert Watson <rwatson( at )FreeBSD.org>     Release Engineering, Security
  John Baldwin <jhb( at )FreeBSD.org>          Release Engineering
  Murray Stokely <murray( at )FreeBSD.org>     Release Engineering
  Bill Fenner <fenner( at )FreeBSD.org>        Spac64 Release Building
  Marcel Moolenaar <marcel( at )FreeBSD.org>   IA64 Release Building
  Peter Wemm <peter( at )FreeBSD.org>          AMD64 Release Building
  Takahashi Yoshihiro <nyan( at )FreeBSD.org>  PC98 Release Building
  Kris Kennaway <kris( at )FreeBSD.org>        Package Building
  Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar( at )FreeBSD.org> Security Officer