I’m new to this, but I thought I’d share my thoughts.
In the last weeks, I have intensively tried the latest versions of: AsteriskNOW, Trixbox, PBX in a Flash, and Elastix.
When you think about it, it’s all the same inside: Centos, Asterisk, and FreePBX.
By far, the AsteriskNOW distro is the cleanest and is my choice.
I quickly discarded PIAF; the install process is clumsy, and unlike what they say it is loaded with bloatware. If you don’t have a fast Internet connection, you’re going to spend the day on it, and my fear is that if you don’t have an Internet connection it will someday stop working because one of their bloody scripts rely on it. I don’t like this. It is over reliant on a live and fast Internet connection; even if they don’t use that to hook you, I still don’t like it.
I discarded Trixbox; although the install process is ok, I did not like the “call home everyday” feature. They’re honest about disclosing it, but it does smell like a trojan horse to get you to the monthly “pro” subscription and lose control over your stuff. There is little bloatware, but still I don’t like these guys knowing everytime I go to the boy’s room. The initial reason I tried Trixbox is because supposedly it would have integrated HUD. Tough luck, the latest version does not support it and I don’t need HUD 3.0 bad enough to pay for it.
I discarded Elastix. The install process is a lot better than PIAF (it’s comparable to ANOW and Trixbox), but there is still a lot of bloatware being installed. Some of it could be tempting, namely the IMAP server and the fax thing, though. It does seem a lot friendlier to non-digium hardware and to foreign languages. But even worse than Trixbox, I don’t like the idea of burying FreePBX underneath a layer of something else. Where in hell is the DAHDI configuration screen gone? I did like some setup options though, such as asking up front for a static IP address (duh), and whether or not you want IPv6 (does not do any good to me now).
In short:
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The OS is Centos (which in fact is Red Hat), and these is no discussion about it. Although there are some valid alternatives, why bother?
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Then the most important component is Asterisk, and there is no discussion about that one either. There are no alternatives.
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Then the interface is FreePBX; even if there is Asterisk GUI, the fact that digium makes FreePBX the first choice in AsteriskNOW and that all the other distros use it makes me go for it.
So, when I chose, I KISSed. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
The distro with the less added bloatware is AsteriskNow.
I have some issues with it, but here I go.
my $0.02,
Michel.