Ubuntu or Fedora which one and now 2.6.22

[Frank Carmickle]

Hi all

On Sun, Jul 29, Michael Weaver wrote:
> I have been using Ubuntu for a good while now and I am still using it
> at home on my desktop which duel boots with Windows XP until I can get
> more accessibility using a web browser with speech be that Orca or
> Speakup.
> Ben Fowler one of the Huddersfield Linux Group chaps who has been
> helping me with my system at home didn't think that Speakup was being
> dropped in the next release of Ubuntu but when we talked about it this
> week at a meeting in Birstall which I managed to get to as a lot of
> people attend both groups and I try to when I can get transport, he
> said it would be a disappointing move if it was.
> This makes me wonder if I should perhaps should switch to Fedora. I
> know I don't have a hardware synthesiser and Speakup's enphasis is on
> hardware speech but would it be a better move switching in order to
> get both graphical and text console support?
> I could of course stick with Ubuntu especially with me now having the
> Braillenote which seems to give me access to Brltty but what does
> anybody else think?

Fedora doesn't include speakup either.  RedHat 8 was the only version that speakup was included with.  What we are up against is the same thing we've been up against for almost 10 years now.    It's a complex problem that is not easy to fix.  Going forward in any distro is going to be hard to do until we get an answer to the troubles that plagues us in kernel 2.6.22 and beyond.  If we get that sorted, and I believe it will based on past experience, then who ever is working on what ever distro will gladly make speakup enabled kernels and boot media available.  This is what we have been doing since 1999 and it will continue on.  Speakup is the screen reader of choice for most blind linux users because it doesn't suck!  We aren't the only ones who are going to have to use older kernels then are distros provide.  This is not that bad for a while.  

Let me just take this opportunity to thank all of the folks who gen up speakup packages for us.  Shane and Bill and Luke and Mario and Tommy and Gene and Kirk and myself, way back when.  I hope I didn't miss anyone.  This stuff will continue forward with folks like us stepping up at different points to get things done that need to be done.  Is it optimum?  Of course not.  But it's a heck of a lot better then we could be doing.

And thanks most of all to Kirk for providing us with this wonderful software.

--Frank