I needed to learn Linux for a project about 18 months ago, so I went down to a retail computer store and bought RedHat Linux. Installed with no problems, and I was up and playing around with it in about an hour. As I got more into it (and started breaking things) I needed some help. The help I got from RedHat tech support was not very helpful. It was the e-mail help you get with the retail consumer version, so I figured you get what you pay for and let it go. If you had a business support contract, it might be better, but maybe not. The best help I got was from joining my local Linux Users Group (LILUG in my case). They were great. And when I went to a few meetings, and got to ask questions in person it got really good! If you have a local Linux User's group that's not too inconvenient to attend I highly recommend it.
Anyway, at the user's group meetings their existed a "friendly rivalry" between the RedHat crowd and the Debian crowd, so I decided to try Debian. Couldn't get it to install. I really tried, even got some help from the Debian guys on the list, but I just couldn't do it. Now, I'm not a Linux guru, but I can follow instructions, but I just couldn't get it to go. Then I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 1 (RedHat open source / development version). No problem. So my newbie experience is that RedHat is quite a bit easier to install. Used to be that one of the big advantages of Debian was its package management system (apt). RedHat has a good package manager now too (yum). So IMHO, go with RedHat for the following reasons: 1. Sounds like price isn't your big issue, so if you purchase an enterprise edition of Linux, you'll have access to RedHat tech support, and you'll have a certain amount of CYA built in. 2. Some might argue that the community support for Debian or Mandrake is better, but the mailing list / IRC support you'll get with RedHat is probably good enough. 3. There are more books available for RedHat than for other distributions. 4. In my experience, it installs easier. 5. Getting security patches and OS upgrades from RedHat is very simple (probably is with the other distros too). For what you're going to do with Asterisk, I don't think there are huge technical differences between the distributions, so the main consideration ought to be "which one can I install and learn the fastest" and not "which one will support the most clients, or have the most uptime". Having said that, there is one caveat - I would stay away from Fedora Core 3 or Debian unstable or whatever newest release of any version. Also keep in mind that Asterisk runs just fine on Linux kernel 2.4.x. You don't need 2.6.x. Jeff Heath _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
