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I just wish they would do more for performance. I've got 2 identical machines - one runs Debian Sid with galeon, Mozilla, firebird, konq, etc. The other runs Win2K. Debian is my main desktop and I use Galeon (which is Mozilla based for those of you unfamilar with Galeon) as my main browser.

IE loads the exact same pages almost instantly, where it can take several seconds for ANY of the linux-based browsers to load - some times as much as 10 times longer. It seems to be mainly an issue with tables.

For example: go to the the asterisk users mailing list, scroll down, click on a message, then click back. See how long it takes to re-render the cached page? Horrible. Try the page in IE and Mozilla. Konquerer is fastest of the linux browsers on this page.

Why didn't you just use Asterisk ?

Asterisk is an AWSOME PBX system that doesn't get mentioned enough on /.

It's supported features are equivalent to a PBX costing several thousand bucks. Including support for VOIP and T-1(E-1)'s

Some of the other features include Voicemail, Conference calling, Caller ID, an Auto Attendant (press 1 for sales, 2 for support,), Call Queuing (for call centers), Call Detail Records, more

The documentation is a little sparse but they are currently working on the
Asterisk Handbook Project (warning PDF).

I also found the Getting Started With Asterisk Guide by Andy Powell very useful.

And there's a IRC channel #Asterisk on FreeNode (try irc.debian.org) (argh /. mangles the irc link)

There's some more links to support pages including a Wiki at the bottom of this page

If you can swing $99 then this might be something to check out. I use one very sucessfully with the asterisk open source PBX and it does quite well. To do what you want to do the configuration is quite trivial also. You would have to supply the audio source in either mp3 or gsm audio and could even create a simple menu that would allow them to select a story to hear.

Eh, if you just need voicemail, get one of these; they're *specifically* supported by Asterisk, a fairly nice PBX/answering package built on top of vgetty.

A lot of what you are requesting has already been done by the Asterix open source pbx project. They recommend using their sponsor's (Digium) hardware to interface your computer with your phone/phones but apparently other hardware is available.

Asterisk: the open source software PBX, which runs on Linux, and has a hardware company to back it up with support and equipment?

"Make free phone calls - all over the world!"

I saw nothing in their website with regards to IP->POTS or POTS->IP transversal. Therefore I don't see where I can make free phone calls all over the world in the traditional sense. "Hey, I wanna call you, but you need to have a computer with broadband and this computer -- oh, and I can't call you from my phone; I must use a computer too."

So isn't this just a hyped up distributed/proxied Voice-chat program? Doesn't Yahoo and ICQ (VIRC and others too) provide similar functionality?

I think I'll stick with Asterisk PBX and use hardware from Digium. Yes, it requires additional hardware for POTS/PSTN stuff, but you can do almost anything you want with it. SIP clients can make phone calls very well through firewalls (receiving takes an extra step or two) and many of the free clients give you a choice of what codecs to use (GSM, iLBC, G711u, G711a). Another option you get with asterisk is using their IAX protocol which is more forgiving around firewalls IMHO.

Just my 2cents

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We have developed our own IVR system using SIP and RTP (in Java) and it runs pretty well on both Linux and Windows. We're planning on getting an Asterisk system together with the boards from Digium to bridge from the "PSTN world" to the "VoIP world". It looked like a great solution for that, we want something that's reasonably cheap and that can just allow customers on PSTN lines to connect to our IVR systems.

Digium. A GNU/Linux telphony company based in Huntsville, AL. They sell T1 PCI cards for GNU/Linux machines and distribute a free as in GPLed software PBX. Check them out!

Disclosure: No, I don't work for them, but I have had lunch with them and they're pretty nice guys!

This is Mark Spencer's most recent project. Same guy that did Cheops and started GAIM. Really cool stuff.