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Getting FreeBSD

Release Information

Detailed descriptions of past, present, and future releases. Look here first to determine what the latest version of FreeBSD is.

Installing FreeBSD

There are many options for installing FreeBSD, including installation from CD-ROM, DVD, floppy disk, an MS-DOS® partition, magnetic tape, anonymous FTP, and NFS. Please read through the installation guide before downloading the entire FreeBSD distribution.

Buying FreeBSD

FreeBSD can be acquired on CD-ROM or DVD from FreeBSD Mall, or one of the other CD-ROM and DVD Publishers.

Download FreeBSD

Note: If you are in doubt of which platform / architecture to get, you probably need i386.

If you plan on getting FreeBSD via FTP, please check the listing of mirror sites in the handbook to see if there is a site closer to you. Alternatively, you may want to download FreeBSD using the BitTorrent protocol. The .torrent files can be downloaded from the FreeBSD BitTorrent Tracker.

Help With The Next FreeBSD Release

Our developers and release engineers are working on the the next release of FreeBSD; if you wish to help with testing, please download the latest build. Please note that these images are, by their very nature, intended for testing and should not be used in production environments.

If you are interested in a purely experimental snapshot release of FreeBSD-CURRENT (AKA 10.0-CURRENT), aimed at developers and bleeding-edge testers only, then please see the FreeBSD Snapshot Releases page. For more information about past, present and future releases in general, please visit the release information page.

FreeBSD-derived Operating System Distributions

FreeBSD 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 FreeBSD users.

• FreeNAS is an open source storage platform based on FreeBSD and supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.

• PC-BSD is a FreeBSD derivative with a graphical installer and impressive desktop tools aimed at ease of use for the casual computer user.

• pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router.

Applications and Utility Software

The Ports Collection

The FreeBSD Ports Collection is a diverse collection of utility and application software that has been ported to FreeBSD.

• FreeBSD Ports Collection
• Web interface to the Ports Collection
• FreshPorts - a more advanced web interface to the Ports Collection

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 FreeBSD.