Re: [orca-list] Ubuntu versus Open Solaris

[Bram Duvigneau <bram bramd nl>]

Hi,

Michael Whapples wrote:
> The main differences as far as accessibility goes are:
> * OpenSolaris the audio mixing issues encountered by some users (ubuntu
> I believe has some straight out of the box) don't seem to exist.
> * OpenSolaris doesn't support as many sound cards as Linux so whilst
> OpenSolaris I feel works better with the audio, poorly working audio is
> better than no audio so Linux is better for variety of hardware. Use the
> Solaris device detection tool if you are in doubt whether openSolaris
> supports your sound card.
> * OpenSolaris cannot run pre-built Linux binary files, so this does
> remove some commercial synth choices (IBMtts comes to mind). Espeak does
> work on OpenSolaris and is the default synth.
> * As openSolaris is not Linux (doesn't run the Linux kernel) if you want
> the speakup screen reader for the text consoles then OpenSolaris will
> not do it.
>
> Other than that, things are very much a like as gnome is used for the
> desktop and this is the same on different platforms.
I would like to add the following. In OpenSolaris, programs such as the
package manager which need more privileges, work with Orca out of the
box. Also I get the idea that Orca with OpenSolaris runs snappier then
Ubuntu. I can't give hard numbers for the last point, but maybe someone
else could give some hints how this could be or that it's just some
subjective feeling?

Furthermore, I think the OpenSolaris 8.11 installer is much better in
terms of accessibility compared with the Ubuntu installer. The only
thing that could be improved in OpenSolaris is out of the box braille
support.

Oh, and of course there are the non accessibility related issues such as
no out of the box NTFS support and may be some trouble with your
wireless, that's at least a few things where I wish we'll see some
improvements over time.

Bram