> My question is about which Linux distribution to choose for Asterisk. (/me > holds breath) OK, hopefully youre still reading, because > whatever you were thinking now, youre thinking wrong! ;) > > First of all, I want to make clear that I have read EVERY message and reply > that I could possibly find about this topic, so that includes the > dozens of messages here on the Asterisk mailinglists, on the Digum forum, and > even Google search results! > > > > Still, my question was not answered! Mainly because the same answer always > came back: Use the one you are most comfortable with . > Well, I already knew that (linux is linux), but it doesnt apply to my > situation at all! > > > > Lets make things clear and concrete now: > > In my professional life, I work as a windows system & network administrator > and as a developer on the .NET platform, and have a long and > extensive experience with telecom and VoIP.
You found the correct answer, but apparently don't understand why its the correct answer. Let's try this approach.... You understand and manage the Windows, .NET, etc, systems because you've learned how to work with those products. It's no different with the various Linux distributions. If you learn how to get around (and manage) a particular linux distro, that becomes the distro that you're familiar with, and it becomes the distro that you recommend to your friends. Almost like recommending a religion. If you're going to support a linux system in a production voip environment, pick a popular distro and attend some classes (or learn through whatever mechanism you are comfortable with) oriented around that distro. Keep in mind that asterisk is somewhat a realtime system, and in the majority of realtime systems you don't want to impact the system's ability to process voip calls by negatively impacting its performance with GUI overhead. Therefore, you'll find a fair number of recommendations that all the GUI stuff be disabled and you run the linux system from a simple command line (just like unix systems were twenty years ago). If you were implementing a small soho system, the GUI interface has little impact; but in larger systems it _can_ impact voip quality. Attending classes on how to deal with the GUI stuff certainly is not going to do you any good. Once you disable all the GUI stuff, the majority of linux distros become _somewhat_ the same. (There are differences, but however one accompishes a task in one distro, there is a way to accomplish that exact same task in a different distro. Once familiar with how to get around in a system, its not difficult to get around any IBM, HP, Sun, BSD, RedHat, Debian, or dozens of other unix/linux systems. So, the bottom line is still the same answer that you've already found and that is, "use whichever linux distro you're familiar with", or, "pick one and learn it". In case you aren't aware, the majority of linux built in functions and applications on various distros come from the same exact source code. The exact directory layout may be different from one linux install to another, and the GUI tools typically have differences, but most of that stuff just does not matter on an asterisk system. You _could_ actually start your own linux distro if you wanted to spend your time doing it. If you want to get into low-level programming, you'll find the majority of the linux/unix OS api's or system calls are almost identical to those in Windows (with the exception of the GUI stuff). There are a number of people throughout the world that have ported linux apps to their favorite Windows box, and if you dig through the source code for those apps, you can "see" the real differences. (There are obviously lots of differences in how Windows kernel routines function when compared to linux/unix equivalent functions, and a lot of that has to do with the slicing, timeslots, interrupt servicing, etc. Asterisk has some very time-critical linux-oriented interrupt servicing requirements, and that's one of the major reasons why asterisk has not been fully ported to a Windows box.) If you consider the stability of the companies that are supporting the various distro's, and think about whether these companies are going to be around in five/ten years, you might choose one distro over another. (This might be a bad example, but you already are familiar with Microsoft vs Novell market share over the last twenty years. Is it in your company's best interest to move forward with a Novell-based distro or maybe a different distro?) So, pick one and learn it. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
