I’ve been using FreeBSD for almost 12 years now and it’s a wonderful OS. What sux about it though is the level of support. I understand that free software comes with only the support level you can find. But the headaches in dealing with FreeBSD have forced me to change.
The real clincher came last month when I tried to build a new FreeBSD-7.1 server and install * using the ports. It appears that someone (who must be much wiser than I am) took the wcfxo module out of the zaptel port. Needless to say this rendered my system useless unless I splurge for new equipment. In these tough economic times I have to watch all expenditures so laying out $400 for a Digium card or even $75 for an ATA device was just not practical. Plus, I cannot understand why the porter(s) decided to remove this module in the first place. And I haven’t even mentioned that using the FreeBSD port means that you’re stuck with the versions the porters put in the tree, unless you know your way intimately around editing make files and hacking an install from source.
So this is to say farewell to my old friend FreeBSD. Linux is not my favorite but the support and drivers that are available make this choice inevitable. And as for Asterisk…I installed Fedora 10, Asterisk-1.6.0.9 along with dahdi and away we go. Now I’m no longer limited to what others place in the port tree.