[Asterisk-Users] Advice on OS Choice

[Kevin Walsh]

Alex Barnes [abarnes at ubiquitysoftware.com] wrote:
> RH 9 Availability:
> 	According to the RedHat site >>>
> http://www.redhat.com/software/rhelorfedora/ RedHat 9 is no longer
> available.  If  
> you say you can still download it from RH that's great, can I assume this
> means it is totally free to use / install on servers you wish to
> sell!?!?!  
> 
You may download and use Red Hat 9, or any earlier Red Hat version,
in any way you see fit.  You can even sell it if you feel that you
can get away with charging for such an old distro.  You should bare
in mind that Red Hat 9 is very old, insecure and includes a mountain
of bloat that you just don't need on an Asterisk server - and this
extra bloat will contribute to its insecurity.

Actually, I'm not sure if you can sell the Red Hat versions that you
can download from their website.  There are a few companies who will
sell you a $1 CD that includes a Red Hat distro without any of the Red
Hat trademarks, and you would be free to sell that, of course.  No doubt
some people in here will be outraged about my suggesting that you bypass
one of Red Hat's revenue streams, after all the good they've done for
GNU/Linux, but I'm not the sort of person who could care less about
things like that.

If you feel that you need a support contract from the distro creator
then I'd advise that you go with the latest Red Hat Enterprise or the
equivalent SuSE version etc.  Just remember to trim the bloat as far
as possible.

If you have the experience to provide the server maintenance yourself,
then I'd advise that you go with one of the community GNU/Linux distros,
such as Gentoo, Debian (spit) or Fedora (belch).  If you're considering
Red Hat 9 then you probably don't have the required experience. :-)

Whichever distro you go for, you should only install the bare minimum
of packages that are required for Asterisk.  That means next to nothing.
For instance, you definitely don't need the X Window System, nor do you
need any of the desktop apps and printing services etc.

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