Trying Asterisk
There are a couple of ways to try Asterisk
The easiest is to download an ISO of a live Linux CD with Asterisk from AstLinux at http://www.astlinux.org
Burn the ISO to CD-R (or compact flash) and reboot and you’ll have a working Asterisk system. You’ll need a USB or flash card to save your configuration, or you can use the CD to install AstLinux on your harddisk. NOTE that this will erase your disk!
You could also downlaod the free VMware Player, set it to boot from the ISO using the virtual CDROM, then install AstLinux in the virtual PC.
Asterisk @ Home is another possibility. At 485MB, the ISO file is a hefty download compared to the 30MB of AstLinux, but it includes Asterisk, AMP, FOP, MySQL, Apache, etc
