Note: This is a RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 of Version 1.2.

It has not been tested carefully and may still contain serious bugs. For day to day and production use please download a Lazarus 1.0.x (e.g. 
Lazarus 1.0.12) release. You can find this in the parent folder.

If you wish to participate in the early testing, you should be prepared  
to backup and restore your data.
If you do not feel experienced enough, please wait for the first release 
candidate in a couple of weeks. You can still join the testing then.

Please also see our pre-release announcement on our forum.

You need to download and install all three packages fpc, fpc-src and lazarus.

fpc - the Compiler, some command line tools, base units and non visual components like database access
fpcsrc - the sources of fpc and its packages, needed for code browsing
lazarus - the IDE, visual components and help files

For an overview what changed from previous 1.0 Versions 
(includes incompatibilities with earlier versions) see:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_1.2.0_release_notes