Hello...

[Gaijin]

Cody Hurst wrote:
> 
>   To get ou up to speed, there is a graphical desktop called Gnome, 

     Thank you for the info.  I've been planning from long ago on
porting over from Debian to Slackware.  Makes it kind of convenient that
they now support the SpeakUp kernal.  I have a fresh copy of Debian
installed, courtesy of a friend's help, and I've poking around in it
using Oralux.  I think I have almost everything but Festival installed.
  I managed to get emacspeak to say "ls" once, so I know there's
something working, sans a hardware speech synth.  I'd rather just get a
supported hardware synth and insall Slackware.  I'm not too sure about
using a GUI anymore.  I like Midnight Commander, tin, and lynx for
pretty much everything.  bitchx, too.  Never got to use pine.  (All
that's from reading the SpeakUp docs on working with SpeakUp and
emacspeak to use Midnight Commander and pine...whatever pine
is...probably an email client.(  For email, I'd probably just make due
with the Linux mail commend.  I have a passion for scripting and
aliases, as I can get things done a whole lot faster just typing "ggl"
than booting up mozilla and navagating all the menus to reach
Google...that and I can script the output to filter out all the links I
don't need to "see."  Back in '02, all I used X for was X-Chat andForte
Agent under Wine.
Anyway, the command line interface is fine for me, as long as there a
couple full-screen utilities and clients to possibly make things easier.
  SpeakUp seems to fit the bill perfectly.  Trying to get Debian running
again from Oralux and Windows has been a real education, to say the
least. <laughs>
     I'll certainly get around to the X environment, once I can get a
usable command line.  I'm planning on having as many fall-back positions
as is possible, as I'm stuck out here in the boonies with little or no
help at all, unless I offer money to someone to come 40 miles.
Relocating to the closest major city has also been an exercise in
futility. <grins>
     Maybe I haven't found the info yet, but is there a way to use the
new USB synthesizers they're coming out with now?  As far as I've
managed to see in the SpeakUp docs, only serial port models and internal
models are supported  I'm hoping there's something simple, like
appending something to the lilo boot prompt to have it communicate with 
a USB port. <shrugs>  I dunno yet.  Lots more to read up on.

     Thank you again for all the help,

         Michael