Here we'll cover in brief the steps needed for a successful FreeSWITCH installation on two of the most popular platforms. Please be sure to check our documentation at http://www.freeswitch.org/confluence for instructions updated to the minute (FS is evolving!).
This is the reference platform, the most deployed and the one on which most development is first done before being ported to other OSs and distros. If in doubt about which Linux distro to use, use this one. On Debian, both installing from source and installing from packages is supported and is mostly automated.
FreeSWITCH 1.8 announcement stated there will be support for Debian 9 "Stretch", that over time will become the preferred Linux distro. Support for Stretch will probably be backported to FreeSWITCH 1.6, please check our http://freeswitch.org/confluence official documentation for up to the minute updates.
Be sure to start from a freshly deployed, updated, clean, bare Debian 8 (Jessie) Server...