[asterisk-users] asterisk distributions

[A J Stiles]

On Thursday 01 March 2012, Ralph Green wrote:
> Howdy,
>   I have tried all of these and a few more.  PBXinaFlash gave me the
> best results, by far.  AsteriskNow produced a basic working system.  I
> could not get any of the others configured to work at all.  I should
> tell you my restrictions.  I was evaluating these distros to see which
> one I could use to teach at a local computer group.  I wanted to do
> very little configuration through the command line,

And *that* is where you were going wrong.

Look, the command line is a fact of life.  Microsoft have spent a fortune 
telling you that you're not smart enough to use it.  You do not have to fall 
for that.  Are you going to sit back and let them call you stupid?

Think of trying to make yourself understood in a foreign country by pointing 
and gesturing.  There comes a point where you will actually have expended 
*more* effort than if you had just bitten the bullet and learned the language 
in the first place.

> since my goal was
> not just to get a working system, but to have something I could easily
> show others how to setup.

Again, this is where the command line excels.  Irrespective of how the user of 
the computer has set up the GUI -- what icon theme they have selected or how 
they have arranged the menus, which GUI tools are present and so forth -- the 
command line method will always be the same.

You really aren't doing your students any favours if you are teaching them 
blindly to avoid what is basically the most powerful feature of a GNU/Linux 
system.

-- 
AJS

Answers come *after* questions.