Re: [orca-list] foresight

["Mgr. Janusz Chmiel" <chmiel phil muni cz>]

Dear syr,

   If You are having foresight Linux old version on Your mind with Gnome 
from year 2005, or ETC, I Am having bad experience with this demonstration 
CD, this project is rather for demonstrating functions of Gnome desktop, The 
live CD is containing old version of Gnome, this version is containing Orca, 
but I was not able to use it correctly. I had problems with detection of 
hardware components such as sound cart or graphics cart. You can try it, but 
I Am not recommending You to do it. Because there are two possibilities.

1. You will not be able to use sound cart,

2. You could use sound cart with Foresight Linux, but Orca is working 
strange.

Orca will run like You asked all Orca setup questions, but it is strange 
behaviour. You would start Orca The orca preferences dialog box can display, 
but how it could work, if Orca did not asked first setup questions?

If there is newer version of foresight Linux, attention, with Gnome, new 
with The latest version of Gnome, please provide Link for downloading .iso 
image to this list or to me directly.

The demonstration Linux CD with Gnome is not able to provide installation 
program to install it to A harddrive.
   So if You are interesting in finding other distro than Opensolaris or 
Ubuntu, try development version of opensuse.
Try it, but this distro is not containing special modules like in 
Opensolaris, so You can not aspect so fast response of Espeak, but There are 
many positive aspects in this distro. Such as: some items in boot menu can 
speak by using Novell special screen reader.

You can download development Real candidate version of Open suse by using 
link to a following WEB page

http://software.opensuse.org/developer

I Am highly recommending You to try this distro, because The special 
modified menu in The Gnome is very near to Windows user interface, and whole 
phylosophy of Opensuse, such as control center, yast, updates and other 
applications can be directly used from Gnome GUI without need to use console 
or Gnome terminal emulation.

There is expert partition manager program included in The installation, try 
to read .PDF manual for Opensuse. Atleast try to give this Distro chance 
while using it in Live mode.
   I do not know, if is it possible to install Speechdispatcher also in 
Opensuse, I think that Yes, but You would probably need to compile this 
package Yourself, but I do not know it exactly, mr Hynek Hanke will provide 
You more exact instructions.

   The opensuse distro is unusually small .iso, when you will find, how 
many drivers and software tools are included in this distro. So I Am 
wisching You much positive experience with this distribution.

Every Linux distro has it's advantages and disadvantages. If I will only 
compare those distros by The fact, if Espeak is working fast and The 
response time is very short, The Opensolaris is for now The best Linux 
distribution which is supporting Orca and Gnome.

But if I would like to compare Ubuntu, Opensuse and Opensolaris distros also 
according to other aspects, I must recommend Opensuse, because there is even 
TV cart support, User can choose from Gui, which sound cart will be used if 
user is using more than one sound cart. Also The procedure for launching 
Orca is now The best in Opensuse, user must only wait until A short beep 
then press F9 and Enter. Try to compare this according to Ubuntu and 
Opensolaris.

   When I tried The opensuse version dated to Jul of this year, I did not 
like it, for several issues. Like:

Festival ENglish voice has been only included, User could not use 
installation program simply by activating it from The desktop. User must 
also use Orca not so simply, like in todays development version of Opensuse.

Opensuse is supporting .rpm packages by The default for install, so You can 
for example install Brltty similarly to The Windows installations of 
programs for this operating system.

Opensuse is supporting several types of installation packages. So try to 
give Opensuse atleast A chance to run it from A live CD.