looking for a "good" accessible linux distro

[Tony Baechler]

My suggestion is the Debian Squeeze live CD.  It comes with Speakup as 
modules, but doesn't load Speakup automatically.  Squeeze still has the 
older kernel, so hardware speech works.  I used it to rescue a system here. 
  There is also the Wheezy live CD, but it only supports software speech due 
to the newer kernel.  The rescue and standard CDs both seem to have a lot of 
security and console tools and there are versions offering X and Gnome.  Of 
all the CDs I've looked at in recent times, I'm the most impressed with this 
one.  I used Samuel Thibault's remaster script, but it still didn't load 
Speakup automatically.  You have to do the following when it boots:

sudo modprobe speakup_ltlk

Also, the Squeeze live CD apparently doesn't come with Espeak and Espeakup, 
so that might be an issue if you can't use hardware speech.  I think Wheezy 
does on the live CD, but I'm not 100% positive and it doesn't load Speakup 
automatically either.

Some others are Vinux which is based on Ubuntu and crashed a lot in my 
tests, GRML which I don't use anymore and can't comment on and Knoppix. 
Knoppix does have software speech, X and console tools.  The Knoppix DVD 
supports a 64-bit kernel while the regular CD apparently doesn't.  I would 
list Knoppix as my second choice for a live CD.  I haven't determined if 
Knoppix comes with Speakup, but it does have its own screen reader.

On 1/14/2013 8:47 AM, Don Raikes wrote:
> My goal is to create an accessible linux livecd with a ton of accessible cyber security tools like cyber forensics and network security tools.
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> I don't mind compiling the tools myself and doing that part, I just need a good baseline linux distro.
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> Most of the tools are console-based, so something that boots to the console is great as long as I can go into an x-windows environment if necessary.
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> I am open to suggestions and would appreciate some tips.