So I just ran into The Geek Gazette - Build Your Own PBX and learned all about Asterisk - The Open Source Linux PBX and Asterisk@Home - The Easy Setup Asterisk GUI ISO.
Finally another nifty-cool project to do something really neat at home. You see, back in my day there were lots of these projects. Setting up a home network was a lot messier. Hell, setting up a Linux was a lot messier (which mke2fs parameters do I use? and how do I write a PPP logon script?). It was fun to get your whole house networked, file servers setup, domain logons and logon scripts setup, lots of things like this... And it was great experience! I was a "systems administrator" by 15 and a "systems engineer" with "systems administrators" to manage by 18. I couldn't have done this without all the great do-it-yourself projects at home.
Now, there have been a few attempts to get people excited about this stuff again, but those have mainly applied to adults (with "real" jobs) just trying to make the most of their homes.
I really think this PBX thing has the potential to be nifty enough to get kids interested in learning a little on their own. I'm probably being too optimistic though . . . Plus, even without Asterisk@Home there's really not a whole lot to setting up the PBX, ESPECIALLY because of the advances in VoIP over the last few years. Remember the good ol' days of when people actually knew what ISDN meant? Oh well...
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