-It does indeed run on RedHat Enterprise Server.
-It will install under MS Virtual Server and I would image VPC too. I get errors once it’s loaded about “Count too high, resetting”. This is a known problem with linux under MS’s VM’s. It doesn’t affect functionality.
-The CLI is basic, basic, basic. At least from what I can tell. I’m sure someone will figure out how to break it out to a better shell. But for now, the default shell doesn’t get you much.
-The configuration looks very similar to 4.1(2). Menus are almost the same. The big difference is that it’s all Cisco Blue and it has a decidedly Java feel to it. That’s a negative for me but I can live with that as long as the rest works.
Now, my success for my first night of fiddling was mixed. I made a key mistake initially that I was able to resolve later. When going through the install routine, don’t configure DNS. Or, if you point it to a DNS on the LAN, make sure you define the A record for the CM5 hostname! Apparently the serviceability portion of CM can’t look at the local host record. So, if it can’t find the host record it can’t attach to the CallManager service for turning on CallManager. That’s right, you still need to turn on the CallManager service from within CM Serviceability.
After I got the service running I ran into another problem. My 1760 which is acting as a gateway is configured with CME. I am then attaching CME to CM5 as an InterCluster Trunk(non-gatekeeper). This was working fine under 4.1 but incoming calls were just going to a fast busy as soon as it tried to transfer it.
I’ll post again when I figure out how to resolve that. For the time being I’ve reverted back to 4.1.
Anyone know how to view memory utilization under CM5? I’m running this under a VM with 512mb of ram allocated. I’m kind of curious to see what the load looks like. Dial-tone responsiveness seemed a lot better than the Dual P2-300 with 256mb of ram I have CM4.1 on! 
Old news now but Apple has announced the move to Intel chips. Woot! I have high hopes that I’ll either be able to run visio through an emulation layer or through Virtual PC. Either way, I hope to get machine speeds out of it. Now I just need to hurry up and wait!
The Cruft Of My Brain is Stephen Fry proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache
