Accessible virtual machine: preferably debian

[Chris Norman]

On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 00:28 -0600, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
> I am running vmware fusion on my Intel mac and have a Windows Xp virtual machine running. I had the Windows xp cd and was thus able to install it without sighted help.
> 
> I would also like to run a linux virtual machine, preferably debian. when I searched the virtual appliance marketplace at http://vam.vmware.com 
> I found lots of possible debian and also ubuntu candidates, but had no way of being sure which ones would include brltty or speakup or at least espeak. I realize I might be able to install these programs once I have the virtual machine up and running, but I would need at least something that would give me sound at the command line so I would have some way of verifying that the machine is indeed up and running. I'd also need to be sure that I indeed could access a console rather than the system just being gui, though I'm not sure whether they all have console ability or not. I don't mind having to do alt-ctrl-f1 to get a console if the console is actually there, but then I'd have to be able to run espeak or something from the command line that would give sound so I could know I had the machine running and was in a console. I'm not wanting to run orca; just want text console. Of course, on the mac, I do have access to Terminal and can use Darwinports and/or fink there, but would still like to have a debian installation in virtual machine form.

I have just checked my apt sources on Ubuntu, ans there is now a
kernel-patch-speakup package.

If you were to install Ubuntu, yes it starts off as GUI, but you could
install speakup, and get it all working from gnome-terminal, then you
could strip out all the graphical packages if you wanted, or you could
just change the run level in /etc/inittab.

Brltty comes shipped as it happens, though I'm not using it with VMWare.

Very nice package though, vmware.

HTH.