I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE in October 2002, we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known security issues, and added initial support for Firewire,
HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies.
This release does not include all of the new technologies that were introduced with FreeBSD 5.0 in January. FreeBSD 4.X releases offer a more conservative platform than FreeBSD 5.0 at this time. For more information about the distinctions between FreeBSD 4.X and 5.0, or for general information about the FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see : link
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE supports the i386 and alpha architectures and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for the i386 are available now. As of this writing, the final builds for the alpha architecture are in progress and will be made available shortly.