[Mac-telephony-list] LinuxPPC & * or OpenPBX?

[Benjamin Kowarsch via List]

On Dec 23, 2006, at 1:07 AM, Thoth via List wrote:

> we've also got someone complaining about the two dollars a
> month an 8600 might take up in electricity.

Which is very commendable. Every measure taken to use energy more  
efficiently is to be embraced.

> In regards to Amanda and Ben, you people are making Linux out to be
> much scarier than it is.  Linux is quite simply not strictly for  
> the land of
> uber l33t *nix geeks anymore.

The overwhelming majority of requests we get from Mac shops go like  
this ...

"Our phone system is the only thing in our company that doesn't run  
on a Mac and for which we need an outside party to look after it for  
us. It works and we have no complaints, no real need to replace it,  
but if it is possible at all, we would like to move it to a Mac so we  
can run it ourselves. If this isn't possible, we will keep it as it  
is now. We are not interested in any non-Mac proposals. Thanks."

We get many of those. Whatever you think the state of Linux is, those  
folks don't share your opinion. And remember, the customer always has  
the last word. Fishing for Linux business in the Mac market is a very  
tough call, I wouldn't bother.

> So you want GUI's for configuring
> apache/bind/postfix/mysql/firewall/etc it can all be found in:
>
> http://www.webmin.com

A GUI is not a commodity item. If it was, Apple would probably be out  
of business. Mac users have very clear ideas what they want in a GUI  
and most of the time they consider web GUI's a very painful  
compromise that they would rather not wish to make. Many times they  
won't even accept a non-native Mac GUI that only looks like a Mac GUI  
running on their Mac, such as applications using the various Java  
compatibility frameworks, or Qt and Wx based apps.

If you dismiss this, you are going to have a serious problem in the  
Mac market, I promise.

rgds
benjk