New Member

Mon Mar 15 12:39:10 EDT 2010

Hi Michael:

Use brltty-minimal.
The only dependency is icu.
Unfortunately it's not available as a binary package in Extra or Community.
Either compile the pkgbuild yourself (from AUR) or use the binary package
found in Chris Brannons repo.

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Michael Whapples
Sent: 15. mars 2010 17:17
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: RE: New Member

The down side is for those wanting a slim system using only the space 
actually required. Continuing with the brltty example, it has a driver 
for X terminals or something like that, so it means if I install brltty 
on ArchLinux the dependencies pull in things like at-spi, something 
totally uneeded if I am installing a text console only machine. On 
debian there is a separate brltty-x11 package which need not be 
installed if I don't want that extra stuff. As you point out the debian 
splitting of packages does mean trying to find all packages actually 
required. As you hopefully now can see there are valid arguments either 
way and that's why I am still a bit undecided which I prefer.

As a note there are some other distros which keep software in a single 
package. Slackware is one but there you are responsible much more for 
ensuring you have any dependencies you will require and gentoo which 
allows you to tell it what parts to compile (I think gentoo you can tell 
it not to compile X stuff).

Michael Whapples
On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, al Sten-Clanton wrote:
> Hi, Michael:
>
> I'm especially interested in this observation about Arch Linux:
>
> "(one thing though in this bit I am unsure whether I like or not is that
> unlike debian it puts the whole of a software package in one package, eg.
> Arch only has a brltty package including development headers, bindings,
etc
> where as debian puts each part of brltty in separate packages)."
>
> I didn't know this.  What do you see as the down side of that?  I may be
> wrong, but this implies to me that more things required to be together
would
> actually be together.  The times I've had to do it with other distros,
> searching for all the packages I needed to make a thing work was a
> nuisance--or a failure.
>
> Al
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca
[mailto:speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Michael Whapples
> Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:10 PM
> To: trev.saunders at gmail.com
> Cc: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.; orca-list at gnome.org
> Subject: Re: New Member
>
> Hello,
> May be a quick history of my time on Linux. Originally I started out on
> slackware, mainly because of slackware containing speakup on its standard
> install CDs. Slackware gave a good base system and I got to like the way
it
> did things. However slackware has got some problems, dependency checking
is
> very weak, its not one of the distros commonly targeted by software
> developers so you sometimes have extra work to install some third party
> software and it lacked gnome. I had a bit of a look around trying a number
> of distros, ubuntu, gentoo and finally settling down with GRML
(essentially
> debian with a few extra packages).
> GRML is very good as a LiveCD but it can become a bit much to maintain
(its
> based on debian unstable, you have other packages from the GRML repository
> which can lead to conflicts, etc). Possibly if debian had more accessible
> install options I would say debian is very good (NOTE:
> my comment on accessible install relates to recommending it to those who
may
> not have a hardware synthesiser or Braille display, the espeakup enabled
> disc Samuel made didn't seem to have the volume raised on my computer and
I
> couldn't find a volume controll app to raise it).
>
> Now for ArchLinux, they have many reasons on their wiki and a description
of
> how Arch compares to other distributions. May be its my use of slackware
and
> debian which makes ArchLinux nice to me. Things I like about it include,
> technical simplicity (its possible to make the package manager in Arch
have
> a preferred order of repositories but simple to specify a package from a
> specific repository should you want
> that) and the flexibility it offers (one thing though in this bit I am
> unsure whether I like or not is that unlike debian it puts the whole of a
> software package in one package, eg. Arch only has a brltty package
> including development headers, bindings, etc where as debian puts each
part
> of brltty in separate packages). Although gentoo may offer greater
> flexibility in how the packages are compiled I personally found very
little
> gain in that compared to the time spent for it compiling the packages
(NOTE:
> I am talking for desktop/laptop systems, normally compiling on their own
> processors).
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 03/14/2010 05:26 AM, trev.saunders at gmail.com wrote:
>    
>> Hi,
>>
>> SO my current view on distros is the following.  I have two general use
>>      
> cases.
>    
>> Case 1:
>> This is mostly servers, but also personal machines for other people and
>>      
> such where I want to do as little maintanance as posible.  I also want a
> stable basic system that general is fairly small.  FOr these system I use
> debian either stable or testing depending on exact needs.
>    
>> case 2:
>> System which will be heavily customized to fit my exact needs.  For these
>>      
> systems I care about how things are configured, and am willing to put
energy
> into configuring them.  For these machines I run gentoo, accept my laptop
> which will become a gentoo box soon.
>    
>>    From what I saw on the arch wiki it looks like arch is somewhere
between
>>      
> these  two.  It looks like debian meets my need for a system I can setup
and
> basically let run with the occasional update better with far less effort.
> It looks like arch's use of binary packages will make it not customizeable
> enough for the machines I care about.
>    
>> An example of a system I want to setup and just let run is the mail
openvz
>>      
> container on my server I want to set it up and just let it run.   Debian
> stable does a good job here it's fairly secure and I trust it  to run
> without my intervention, and only gets updated every couple months.  On
that
> system I can deal with dependancies pulling x libs etc.
>    
>> On the other hand the hypervizer of that server runs gentoo, because
there
>>      
> having x libs etc hauled in is far less aceptable because of security etc.
> THis makes gentoo's use flags which alow me to control dependancies are
very
> useful.
>    
>> So I'm curious what people like about arch especially over gentoo?
>>
>> Trev
>>
>>      
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>
>
>
>    

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