Re: accessible distros

[Jason White <jasonw ariel its unimelb edu au>]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 01:58:29PM -0700, Cody wrote:
 
>   Another post in one day. I've been a distro hopper for a while, and can't
>   find the right distribution. I was just wondering what the most accessible
>   distributions were. I would mainly do things like instant message, web
>   browsing, document editing, and maybe some programming. 
As long as the access software you need has been packaged for your chosen
distribution, it doesn't matter much which you select from the point of view
of accessibility. However, judging by this mailing list, Ubuntu and Debian
developers are quite active in working on accessibility. Also, the Debian
packaging system (used in both Debian and Ubuntu) allows you to make major
upgrades without re-installing the operating system, which is a real advantage
over, for example, Fedora Core. (As I understand it, Fedora systems can be
upgraded without a re-install but it isn't officially supported, unless that
has changed recently).

There are more packages available, at better quality, in Ubuntu and Debian as
well. Another possibility worth considering, if you don't mind having
everything built from source code, is Gentoo, which I run on my laptop. My
desktop machine has Debian installed. When I upgrade my computer I am
contemplating Ubuntu due to its fairly up to date accessibility-related
packages and its roots in Debian.

In the end, choice of distribution comes down to personal preference.