An important milestone in the project has been reached today. We are publishing the first release in our 2.0 series. This has been in the works since late 2008. Developers have been testing this new series since mid 2009 and the public has been providing feedback since February of this year.

So, what have we been up to in all that time?

Porting to Linux

The 1.0 series of Askozia®PBX started as a fork of m0n0wall®, a firewall project based on FreeBSD. Our first step in creating 2.0 was to move the project to Linux.

We forked the T2 Linux distribution and tailored it to the project's needs. T2's build system is amazing. It provides us the ability to produce images for a whole range of CPU architectures and system types. The entire porting process was sponsored by Auerswald, a German telecommunication equipment manufacturer. They are also now running AskoziaPBX on some of their offerings!

It "Just Works"

Once we were running on Linux, the deep rewrites began. A lightweight GUI and validation framework was added and many pages completely rewritten. The entire WebGUI was audited for clarity, simplicity and logical defaults. Also, any task which could be automated, was.

The project focuses on making the complex world of telephony understandable. Consumers will be able to use this, not just techies familiar with the jargon.

Flexibility

With the revision work complete, one issue had to be addressed: flexibility. As popular and stable as the 1.0 series has been, this complaint kept coming up. In 2.0, experienced users can now manually edit files and have their changes rolled into the unified XML configuration file (i.e. changes survive in backup/restore/restart/upgrade procedures).

We call this new interface the "Integrator Panel." It is an AJAX based overlay in the WebGUI and can be accessed anywhere by simply pressing the 'ESC' key.

New Features

After all of that was complete, the new features started finding their way in as testing continued. Here are some of the highlights:

• Blackfin CPU architecture support
• moved from Asterisk® 1.4 to 1.6.1
• auto-detection and configuration of Analog and ISDN ports
• improved regional analog compatibility options
• provider port groups
• multiple provider failover support
• many new countries indication tones supported
• remote configuration of Redfone gateways
• Storage Disk interface and storage services
• Media Manager to install additional voice prompt packages
• ssh and sftp support
• rework of Dialplan Applications: PHP, syntax highlighting, Flite text-to-speech engine (beta)
• Skinny Phone support (beta)

For the full list of changes, please visit the changelog.

Periphery

Not only has the "product" of AskoziaPBX moved forward but everything around it has been gathering steam. There are now more than 10 committers. The forums are growing at an impressive rate each month. Downloads are already over 20,000 for 2010. Our shop is getting new products soon and a complete redesign. Also, starting today, all appliances there will be sold running 2.0.

We're also working with two new manufacturers to get their appliances running AskoziaPBX. To see the project's success translate into commercial interest is great. It confirms that Asterisk can be made attractive and useful for the everyday consumer.

Downloads

If you've been keeping us with the project during this development phase, you're really only after this section. Enjoy your fresh downloads!

Product Firmwares
Live CD
Generic PC Firmware
Embedded Firmware
(NOTE: upgrading directly from 1.0 to 2.0 is not supported due to the change in operating system) 

Final Thanks

The community has been great during this whole process and deserve a huge thanks. After the initial intense Linux porting work was complete, you all picked up right where 1.0 left off. New ideas, patches, bug reports and new features all rolled in. Especially in the run up to 2.0's release, the power of Open Source really shined. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed or spread the word about AskoziaPBX!

-Michael Iedema & the AskoziaPBX team

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