[Asterisk-Users] Linux Distribution for Asterisk server use

[Rich Adamson]

> 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.