[VoIP] Fedora, CentOS or What?

[Russ Price]

Jonathan Kay wrote:
>  If you started from scratch now, what would be your Linux distro of 
> choice for a purely Asterisk box?

The problem with Fedora is that it is in constant flux, and updates are 
only available for about six months beyond the next release.  After 
that, your system will be a sitting duck for cracking.  Furthermore, 
when you update a Fedora box, there's always a chance that something 
will break - I've been bitten by that on laptops with wireless cards, 
and on my gaming/media system, where sound stopped working after one 
update.  That prompted me to switch it to CentOS 5.

CentOS 3 end of life is Oct. 31, 2010; for CentOS 4, Feb. 29, 2012; 
version 5 will last until Mar. 31, 2014.  I would consider CentOS 4 to 
be just fine - as long as you keep current with upgrades.

The CentOS 4 server CD is a 4.4 version, so it would need to be upgraded 
to 4.5 immediately once you install it; a "yum update" would suffice.

I haven't tried setting up a CentOS 5 Asterisk box - mine is a 4.5 system.

If you decide to go with Ubuntu, use a Long Term Support edition, and it 
would probably be best to compile Asterisk from source for CNET purposes.

	Russ