I recently found a nice read about a Linux Project or Distro that includes Asterisk. It contains all the Asterisk stuff one will ever need. The project is called AsteriskNOW.

You can donwload the package at asteriskNOW.com. You can choose to download and ISO image or a VMWare image on the donwload page.

The is so easy to use and install that AsteriskNOW claims that you can install it 30 minutes!

Mark Spencer, the original author of Asterisk and founder of Digium, said

“What we did was take the Asterisk, the GUI, and a variety of other packages and put it all in a CD that you drop it in a computer and install. And that is what AsteriskNOW is.”

Here’s a video of Mr. Spencer himself, showing how easy it is to install and get started with AsteriskNOW.