[asterisk-users] New Embedded Distro

[Darrick Hartman]

shadowym wrote:
> Astlinux does seem to be growing cob webs a bit.  Askozia doesn't support
> Zaptel cards in the GUI and not sure if it is possible to configure them
> manually.  There is no Voicemail storage mechanism yet.  It's still very
> basic but a nice start.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Graves [mailto:mgraves at mstvp.com] 
> A couple of weeks ago I noticed Askozia PBX, which is a new embedded
> Asterisk & OS distro at http://askozia.com/pbx. This caught my
> attention for two reasons; it uses v1.4 of Asterisk, and it uses the
> m0n0wall development framework to build on FreeBSD with a PHP based
> GUI. I've used m0n0wall for years, and FreeNAS also, which shares the
> same OS/GUI framework.
> 
> I booted the latest build of Askozia PBX on a small system fors
> testing. The GUI looks nice. I' not certain if I want v1.4 in
> production as yet. If that proves to be the case then Askozia looks
> like a candidate to replace Astlinux, which is v1.2 and has essentially
> no GUI.

A few comments on this as one of the Astlinux developers.  Asterisk 1.4 
is and has been in a beta branch for some time.  The developers feel 
that while 1.4 is the future, in many cases 1.2 is a much more stable 
platform.  Also while there hasn't been a release with significant 
changes recently, there has been significant action behind the scene.

Askozia looks like it has made a huge amount of improvements and changes 
since it was first introduced.  There are significant differences 
between the two platforms.  Each project has different goals, different 
licenses and different strengths.

Astlinux is built on a very customizable framework that can allow it to 
be used for other applications besides Asterisk.  We have several 
supported vpn's, full firewall support, and a published development 
environment.  There's support for Digium, Rhino and Sangoma zaptel 
hardware.

Askozia appears to be centered around the GUI.  While that's not 
necessarily a bad thing, an experience Asterisk user may want to 
manipulate the raw config files.  Networking support appears to be 
limited.

In any case, I applaud the author of Askozia for his efforts.  Taking on 
a project of this size takes a considerable effort.  In many cases it's 
a volunteer effort.

Regards,

Darrick
-- 
Darrick Hartman
DJH Solutions, LLC
http://www.djhsolutions.com