Re: [orca-list] Orcaquery new Ubuntu user

[Rudolf Weeber <rudolf faveve uni-stuttgart de>]

Hi Scott,
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 03:05:33PM +1000, Scott Rutkowski wrote:
> I've managed to run the live cd for Ubuntu 7.10 and it's running fine. I'm wondering is the support for 
> Orca better in the latest Ubuntu 8.04 release and should I wait for this release before doing anything 
> major with Ubuntu and Orca?
I think, orca has improved alot over the last six months. It is
therefore worthwhile installing a newer version. 
I'm still using Ubuntu 7.10 but with the latest orca - compiled from
source.
There are instructions for this on the orca wiki.

> My main problem with Orca is are most of you using the gui in orca or do you all mainly use a terminal 
> window to carry out most functions in Ubuntu?
I use a terminal whenever possible, because thats just faster once you
get to know all the commands. Many sighted people do this as well.
I use Orca for OpenOffice, Firefox and the file manager.

For the terminal, I still use the text console with brltty, because
there is no cursor routing and copy/paste support in gnome-terminal with
orca yet.

> The main problem also is with gnome itself, is there a taskbar like in windows where you can access icons 
> such as the time date and if there are any updates for Ubuntu?
Yes. You jump to this area (whcih also contains the menu bar) by
pressing alt+ctrl+tab.

> What's the easiest way of making sure your system is up to date with all packages and what's the first 
> thing one should do once Ubuntu is installed?
You should cary out the instructions for making it possible to run
administrative commands with orca support. This is also explained in the
wiki.
After that, you can use 
update-manager
to check for updates.
Alternatively, you can run
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
in a terminal to fetch updates.


Hth,
cheers, Rudolf