installing speakup on ubuntu

[C. Martens]

Hi Aerospace,

I don't think I can help answer your specific questions, but my best advice is to simply try it without sighted help. It's not like you can screw up your current kernel by compiling a new one, especially since any new kernel you do successfully compile has to be installed, too, as another step, before any change to your computer setup is made. But perhaps I can also help with some background info:

FYI, speakup kernel support was dropped for Ubuntu 8.04 ("Hardy"), although I believe it did exist for 7.10 Gutsy, and I heard it was being supported again for 8.10 Intrepid. That's why you have to compile a custom kernel for Hardy, which I did a couple of times back in July and August. Be forewarned though!: on many machines, a kernel compile for Hardy will take 8 hours or more, which is way more than it used to take me to compile kernels for Gentoo, but if you know your hardware really well, you can reduce the compile time by eliminating a lot of the hardware support (responsible for ubuntu bloat, but it's a tradeoff: lots of hardware detection capabilities BUT resulting in bloat, too) that is part of the standard Hardy kernels. I did know the hardware and the complex kernel jargon/options for kernel compilation very well for my own machine (tons of complex hardware, like tuners, but well practised with minimalist-Gentoo compiles) but did not know the
 hardware/kernel-options of the pc I built for the blind user as well because I hadn't had so much Gentoo practise :-) Nor did I want to remove a lot of the Ubuntu standard kernel includes because making decisions like "this isn't necessary" would have reduced with the user's hardware upgrade-detection options in the future.

I realize you'd like to do it without sighted assistance (from people like me), and while I can't be certain, I'm not sure that it can be done with Orca (perhaps with brltty; I have no experience with that) because kernel compilation is done using the framebuffer, and Orca only works with gui-necessary apps, and not all of them, either, which is why I was disappointed with Orca and ended up going the non-gui speakup route. Also, my intended user wanted to use console apps he was familiar with (e.g. lynx), so Orca wouldn't have been able to help him with those.

If you do get sighted help, make sure they've done a kernel compile before - the more the better, and give them as much information about your hardware as possible, and/or be prepared for a very long compile time.

Please don't take the above reference to Intrepid as a sign of hope that you can avoid the kernel compilation. I don't recommend it at the current time. Yes, I did install it on one of my test machines, and struggled with it for awhile before giving up, but as with Hardy, lots of things did not work very well right after the official release. Basic networking was way more difficult than it should have been, with Intrepid, and there were a host of other problems that tons of users in the Ubuntu and Kubuntu IRC channels complain about. I would never install 8.04 by itself now; it's always 8.04.1 for me, on these pc's that I build. I'll try again with Intrepid in a month or two.

Somehow, I don't think Kitty understands the limitations of Orca (I didn't get it to work with any terminal), or how it sucks up tons of ram, slowing down the machines... Of course, I don't understand a lot of the assistive technology as well as my user (are your ears burning?) because I don't use it every day, so perhaps I shouldn't say anything on that score. My main role was to put the hardware together, install the OS, and get some of the synthesizers working to the point where my user could take over.

Just my two cents; hope it helps.

Cathy

>I have Ubuntu (8.04) installed on a test machine (not connected to the
>internet).  I have orca and brltty both working well, but I'm interested in
>getting speakup for use in the text consoles (CTRL+F1-F6).  My understanding is
>that I will need to re-compile the kernel.  I want to know, is there a way to do
>this without sighted asistance?  The kernel compiling instructions on the ubuntu
>wiki site require ncurses and to my understanding, orca does not function well
>with ncurses.  Am I correct?  Will brltty read ncurses?  Is there another way to
>build the kernel with speakup?

>Thank you:-)
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:40:13 -0500
From: "Kitty Litter" <n8kl at insightbb.com>
Subject: Re: installing speakup on ubuntu
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux."
	<speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <EE562F5F864148D4A975934F2F50598F at randy3>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
	reply-type=original

You don't need sighted help compiling a new kernel. It can all be done
using 
gnome terminal. You can get the latest kernel source from kernel.org. There 
might already be a ubuntu package with speakup in the kernel for all I know. 
If Orca is working correctly I'm not sure what the big advantage of using 
speakup is anyway, but it is nice to have around. So if you really must 
build that kernel, the best way is to have someone talk you through it. 
Kinda makes me tired just thinking about it. Too early for a nap though! 



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