can speakup be used in bsd?

[Jacob Schmude]

Hi
The short answer is that the BSDs are quite a bit different from  
Linux, and that speakup will not work with BSD. I've provided more  
detailed responses under each of your questions.


On Jun 8, 2007, at 8:56 PM, Jeremy wrote:
> . First of all, what are the biggest
> differences between the bsd systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
> and the linux distros, gentoo, debian, etc? From researching and
> reading it seems that there are people that either love or hate one
> or the other.

Now, this is quite a large area for discussion. The biggest  
difference, as I see it having used both Linux and the avrious other  
flavors of UNIX, is that BSD is an entire operating system (kernel,  
tools, utilities, etc), while Linux is simply the kernel. The rest of  
what most people consider "Linux," is what a particular Linux  
distribution decides to provide. The basics are always the same, such  
as some of the core unix commands like ls, cp, rm, mv, etc. However,  
beyond that, many things are specific to one distribution or another,  
such as system maintenance tools, configuration file locations, the  
way certain subsystems are configured by default, and things like  
that. Also, Linux is based almost entirely around the GNU project for  
its utilities, while the various flavors of BSD are less so. For  
instance, in Linux most of your basic commands are provided by the  
GNU project, via packages such as fileutils (for ls and similar). In  
BSD, these basic commands are not written by the GNU project, rather  
they are either written or adapted from the original BSD by the  
development teams. This usually isn't important to most people,  
except for some slight syntactical differences in which command-line  
options are used and in what order arguments should be given. When  
these differences become important, however, is when you're trying to  
explore the system, and/or troubleshoot it. If you're using Linux,  
you have to worry about what distribution and all the factors that go  
into that. Among some of the lesser-used distributions, information  
is not always as easy to find. In addition, the problem of different  
packaging formats comes up much more often between various Linux  
distributions, as does the issue of binary compatibility (what was  
compiled for one set of libraries will not necessarily work with  
another version of the same libraries provided by another distribution).
In contrast, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are operating systems, not  
different distributions of BSD. If you say you're using FreeBSD, then  
that's it. No worrying about distributions, libraries, binaries, and  
where the files are located. You just need to look up information  
pertaining to the version of FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD you have, and  
you've got the information you need.
> From a security standpoint, what is more secure?
That's a question not easily answered. Statistically, however,  
judging by the amount of holes reported in one system or the other,  
OpenBSD seems to have a slight edge so far in this field. It's the  
smallest and least hand-holding of the BSD systems, though there's  
plenty of documentation if you want to use it. Incidentally, it's my  
personal favorite for servers, since if you know what you're doing it  
doesn't get in your way at all.
>

> Also,
> if bsd is like linux, as it seems to be, could speakup ever be made
> to work with it?
The current version of speakup couldn't just be ported over to BSD,  
as speakup is a patch to the Linux kernel and the BSD kernels are so  
different that comparing them would be like comparing apples and  
oranges. I have no doubt that a screen reader like speakup could be  
written for the various BSD systems, but you can't just run speakup  
on BSD.
This is not to say that BSD isn't useable the way Linux is. While  
there's no screen reader for the BSD command line (save for YASR  
which I've seen no work done on in a few years), you can install BSD  
via serial console using a Linux computer over a serial connection.  
This renders the BSD installation process just as accessible as  
Linux, and once you have the system running you can ssh into it from  
the network. As far as the GUI screen readers go, you can install  
gnome on BSD easily enough and, so long as you have a speech engine  
supported that works on whichever BSD flavor you're using, the Gnome  
screen readers will work.

Wow, I'm out of breath now. Grin.