[quote=“Nerd Vittles”]Want a rock-solid PBX at a rock-bottom price: free! Yep, it’s been a week and here we go again! Asterisk@Home 2.2 has hit the street primarily because of a bug-fix release of Asterisk! Now you get the latest version of Asterisk (version 1.2.1), and you also get the latest and greatest version of Linux, CentOS 4.2; the latest Festival Speech Engine (1.96); the latest version of the Asterisk Management Portal (1.10.010); the Flash Operator Panel (version 0.24); Open A2Billing; Digium card auto-configuration; fax support; loads of AGI scripts including weather forecasts and wakeup calls; xPL support; the SugarCRM Contact Management System with the Cisco XML Services interface and Click-to-Dial support; plus some more bug fixes. And it amazingly still fits on a single CD!
The installation process is pretty straightforward. You download the 2.2 ISO image from here, burn a CD (click here if you need a refresher course), use an old clunker PC or an under $200 WalMart special (see inset), insert the CD you made, plug your machine into the Internet and turn it on. Then watch while Asterisk@Home loads CentOS/4.2 and all the Asterisk and Linux goodies imaginable: Apache, SendMail, Comedian Mail, SugarCRM, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, SSH, Bluetooth, the Asterisk Management Portal, the Flash Operator Panel, Call Detail Reporting, and on and on. We’ve covered how to use most of the Linux products in our Mac HOW-TO’s (see sidebar), and they work exactly the same way with Asterisk@Home so keep reading. And, yes, this install will reformat (aka ERASE) your hard disk before it begins, but it now warns you first. [/quote]