Some Questions About Linux And SpeakUp

Parham parham16 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 8 00:25:54 EDT 2007


Sorry, something is not clear here. If Ubuntu has a screen reader itself, 
why do I need the support of Speakup?
And also, Orca doesn't support command lines?
Yes. So far Ubuntu is very good since I want something which has gui and the 
text version both together, but these questions that I mentioned above would 
be what I will help me decide.
Thanks for your help, both.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lorenzo Taylor" <daxlinux at gmail.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 2:32 AM
Subject: Re: Some Questions About Linux And SpeakUp


>> Do you prefer a distribution that concentrates on the text-based
>> environment, or is the GUI OK? I have had much success with Ubuntu
>> http://www.ubuntu.com
>> and use it almost exclusively. Well, it's my only Linux distribution
>> of choice, and I only use Windows XP in a virtual machine to play
>> audio games. Ubuntu includes Orca, which is a screen reader for the
>> GNOME GUI and works well with Evolution (e-mail), Totem (Media
>> player), and the alpha builds of the Firefox web browser as well as
>> decent support of openoffice.org for word processing and spreadsheets
>> as well as other things you may find usable and enjoyable.
>>
>> I know I might get flamed for my choice, since Ubuntu is dropping
>> support of Speakup in the next release, <smile>, but I have had no
>> complaints or major breakage with it so far, even after quite
>> prematurely upgrading to the unstable Gutsy repo. I can also say that
>> Orca is working quite well for me in a text terminal to do those
>> things I absolutely must use the command line for like copying and
>> moving files and installing/removing/upgrading packages, simply
>> because that's the way I prefer to do those things. Perhaps Ubuntu
>> will include Speakup in a later release for those who still need pure
>> text-mode access, but if you use the GUI at all, I highly recommend
>> Ubuntu, even without Speakup.
>>
>> If you prefer to have no GUI and only use text-mode/command-line
>> applications, I would recommend Debian. Speakup modified versions of
>> the Debian net install CD's are available for the latest stable
>> version, and if you like the latest versions of packages, upgrading to
>> Unstable usually doesn't cause any major breakage. I actually used
>> Debian Unstable for about 3 years before switching to Ubuntu. I'm not
>> sure, however, that Speakup modified Debian installers support
>> software speech at this time. It is possible, though, to bootstrap a
>> Debian system from an existing Unix-like OS, but this takes quite a
>> lot of work, and I had trouble with it myself, and I consider myself
>> somewhat of a power user.
>>
>> As for Grml, I had trouble after installing it once, so I didn't try
>> again. It may have just been the laptop I was instaling it on, but it
>> behaved differently after the install than the live CD did. This was
>> about 2 years ago, however, so a lot has probably changed since then.
>> If your question about Grml was can it be installed in some other way
>> than using the live CD, the answer is no, since Grml is only a live CD
>> to my knowledge. If, however, your question is can Grml be installed
>> to your hard drive, then the answer is yes. There is an install script
>> that will put it on your hard drive for you with little or no trouble.
>> If you like, try it out and you may find it quite useful. Grml is also
>> Debian based, so you should get access to all the packages Debian has
>> available.
>>
>> Hope all this info helps,
>> Lorenzo
>>
>> I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
>> --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)
>
>
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