[arm-allstar] hamvoip on DIAL?

[David McGough]

Hi Jan,

I use Debian (or Ubuntu) extensively at my day job, so, I understand your
desire for a Debian environment. I've used Debian for 20+ years and Unix 
30+ years!

The hamvoip solution is fully integrated with Arch Linux, at this point,
so, no it's not practical to split it out piecemeal. Originally, this was
done because we needed the latest-and-greatest "bleeding edge" kernels and
tools to get the Asterisk/AllStar solution to work. Now, several years
later, Debian (or Raspbian, etc.), has significantly caught up. But, even
today I found that having access to the very latest utilities present in
Arch Linux builds is an advantage. An example of this advantage occurred 
just last week, where I needed features in the latest version of gpg (GNU 
privacy guard). I was able to painlessly include gpg version 2.2 in the 
hamvoip distro, while even Ubuntu 16.04 is still WAY back at gpg version 
1.4.20!  Arch Linux wins again.

For those who are unfamiliar with Arch Linux, it's still just a normal
Linux/Unix environment, all the typical commands and utilities are there.
All the configuration for Asterisk/AllStar (the /etc/asterisk directory, 
etc.) is the same.

For package management, the utility is pacman, rather than the various
apt* and dpkg* tools found under Debian. pacman is very easy to use.

One biggest common complaint I hear, and have myself, is the fully-
integrated use of systemd for system management, versus the older System
Five (SysV) style init found in earlier versions of Linux. First, let me
tell you that I, too, cuss these new systemd utilities on a regular
basis!!! But, it is the future. And, Debian is headed toward that same
future. At least with Arch Linux, you can move forward to the very latest
software versions, whenever needed. I can't tell you the dozens of times
at my day job I've had to resort to "hand cooking" upgraded packages for
Debian, because the released/packaged code was obsolete! Anyone who has
tried to get the latest video cards, monitors (X windows) or perhaps a
brand new scanner (sane drivers!) to work knows what I'm talking 
about.

Anyhow, give Arch Linux a chance. It grows on you.


73, David KB4FXC



On Wed, 20 Sep 2017, "Jan Timmers via arm-allstar" wrote:

> Would hamvoip work on a DIAL distro?  I realize it comes built into Arch
> Linux, but I'm not at all familiar with Arch :-(
> 
> I'm just an old Debian guy.  So is hamvoip a standalone package, ie:
> "hamvoip.deb" that I can dl and install?
> 
> tnx - jt
> 
>