GNOME.org
 

Re: [orca-list] orca questions

On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 22:40 +0100, Georgina Joyce wrote:

Hi Michael

I don't understand why you've took the bother to email me privately.

I didn't think I had, I thought I had responded to the list as well, may
be a lapse of concentration, but my sent folder says otherwise.

You can read that I'm familiar with lfs and support the promotion of
linux and to facilitate the learning of linux.

I understand you to be a developer, so should understand the rational
behind building from source.

Yes I do, and its probably one of the reasons I choose slackware, no
separate dev packages when I do want to build from source.


As for your comments of lfs being inpractical, I beg to differ.  As far
as debian having a good package manager I agree but every package
manager has it's weaknesses.  All package management systems take
control away from the user.  They bung a load of stuff that the user
doesn't want or need.  I don't know how long you've been using debian
but I've been using it for about 10 years and I've seen some spectacular
problems with apt.

I don't actually use debian (I did try it), may be I found apt a bit
much if you wanted full control on what you were doing. As slackware's
packaging is simpler and less of a core thing, there is less to do if
you wish to maintain a software package on your system (I mean build it
from source, such as if I wish to use orca from SVN and keep it right up
to date).


Are you suggesting that all the support I've given to the lfs live cd is
waisted?

No certainly not. I did use gentoo for some time, and it certainly
helped me understand more about my system, but I just found some of the
manual configuration a bit much for just having a core system which
works. On the other hand, I have used ubuntu, but gave that up in
fustration as I found it a bit much when I wanted to take control of
things apt normally would manage, so I found myself referring to the
manual a lot or just breaking how apt worked. As I have hinted at, I
feel slackware gives me this balance of control and ease of having
packages to make the core of the system just work.


Obviously, I can leave such questions to you in the future.

It's always good to have more than one view on things. May be this time
I spoke louder than need be, you probably know more about LFS than I do.
I just wanted to raise the fact (as I understood it) that LFS would not
solve the problem of a different interface as it is providing very much
the same software as other distros, the difference being that it allows
greater control of what software to include, what hardware to optimise
for, and what optional features should be built. This configuration will
come at the cost of time I would expect. Please just correct me if I
have understood this wrong, how else will I learn about this.


Gena 

Michael Whapples

On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 21:58 +0100, Michael Whapples wrote:

That probably explains LFS fairly well, it helps you learn about the
system, and make some modifications, but essentially you are using the
same software as you might when using other distros. LFS I wouldn't
think is a practical system for everyday use as there seems to be so
much involved, I would extend the saying to read "It's your distro, it's
your rules! It's your time.". Systems like debian have a good package
management system to reduce problems with needing to find dependencies
and compiling your own software. 

So to return to the actual question, Linux from scratch won't help you
create a different user interface, but it might have value if you want
to learn about some of the workings of linux.

Michael Whapples
On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 19:57 +0100, Georgina Joyce wrote:

Hi

Linuxfromscratch is a project that enables the linux user to learn what
is involved in the design of an operating system.  Their slogan is your
distro your rules.  Thus you build each package from the source.  So you
can build with optimisations.  Why build software that will run on a
wide range of Intel processors when you use a AMD 64 bit processor, for
example.  What is a tool chain and what is a circular dependency?  Are a
couple of useful learning outcomes.

 When the maintainers of a distribution make decision's they have to
make it generic to run on a wide range of machines from different
manufacturers and different chipsets. For as many different users as
possible.  Distributions also have to put in their bundle a wide range
of utilities etc. that not everybody wants.  So with linuxfromscratch,
if you have a static network, your not going to waste your time building
packages for DHCP for example.

Distributions also dictate how you boot your machine, the sequence of
run levels and daemons etc.

Linuxfromscratch is a great way of learning how linux works and is great
fun.  It's your distro it's your rules!



On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 01:22 -0400, Alex Hall wrote:

Thanks, that explains a lot.  Linux is the code that makes the 
hardware play nice, and all other things, such as GUIs and shell 
interfaces, run on top of that.  Is this Linux from Scratch 
project a way of building your own linux, with the shell and 
everything being designed by you, or is it more of a linux 
distribution that has no extra programs installed? The book does 
not make this quite clear, to me at least; I probably just missed 
it though.

Have a great day,
Alex


----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com
To: Alex Hall <mehgcap gwi net
Date sent: Fri, 23 May 2008 22:27:21 +0100
Subject: Re: [orca-list] orca questions



Hello,
Yes unfortunately some of those lock up situations do occur, I 

don't

know fully why, but could very well exist on other distros.  You 

may wish

to try other distros though, they may perform better, and they 

might be

better suited if you have some thing specific in mind for what 

you will

be doing.



Now to explain further about various terms in Linux.  Some of 

this you

might have already found out, but might be interesting.



Linux is the operating system.  It manages things like your 

computer's

hardware, etc, and basically allows the parts inside the metal 

box be

used.  A distribution, its a bit of an odd idea if you are purely 

used to

windows, is Linux bundled up with various applications, and also
different distributions may have been compiled so as to be 

optimised for

particular hardware or tasks.  The correct distribution is 

decided by

what you want to do with the system, how you want to interact 

with the

system and what type of computer you will be running it on.  

There are

some distributions, ubuntu, debian, and some other main ones are
designed as general purpose distributions, so could be used for a 

wide

range of tasks.  Some others are much more specific and could be 

unsuited

for tasks other than those they were built for.



The most basic user interface (I say basic as in how it appears, 

not in

what can be done) is the command line, most distributions (I 

think all)

have text consoles available where you can work from the command 

line (a

bit like DOS, but I would say better).  The command line features 

are

provided by the shell, which there are a few of, bash is the most
common, but there is zsh, csh, etc.  Each of these shells have 

there

advantages, and it might come down to personal preference as to 

which

one to use.



While the text console is very much at the heart of Linux (some,
including me, say that it is where the power of Linux lies), is 

not the

only user interface.  There is a graphical user interface as well 

(you've

found it already, otherwise how else are you using orca).  As I
understand it, various services for graphical user interfaces are
provided by the X server, and specific interfaces are built upon 

that.

GNOME is one of the graphical user interfaces for Linux, in fact  

its a

bit more really than just the user interface, it provides a whole 

bundle

of graphical applications for using your system.  These graphical 

user

interfaces (such as gnome) are normally referred to as the 

desktop.

There are other desktops available such as KDE (KDE you might 

hear of a

bit, its another of the major desktops for Linux).



Now to what GTK is.  Its a graphical user interface toolkit.  

This

basically means that it is a toolkit providing applications an 

easy way

to produce graphical user interfaces which fit in with a common 

style.

One feature of GTK is that it provides a way that accessibility
information can be made available from applications to tools such 

as

orca.  GTK is the toolkit used by applications written for the 

gnome

desktop.  There are other graphical user interface toolkits, 

another main

one is QT, which is used by the KDE desktop.



I said that GTK provides a way for accessibility information to 

be made

available to orca, it doesn't do it directly, it provides it to 

at-spi.

At-spi is the accessibility framework used in Linux, and is 

separated

from GTK because it then can be used by other applications not 

using

GTK, eg.  java applications have information revealed through 

at-spi when

the java access bridge is installed.



I think that covers the basics.  I also hope I got this right, 

there may

be some small subtle difference as I have done this all from 

memory

without looking up exact definitions.



Hope it is useful.



Michael Whapples
On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 07:51 -0400, Alex Hall wrote:

It would lock up when doing things like looking for and
installing media codecs for Rhythm Box, not when just moving
through menus.  I am quite new to all this: what is GTK? What is
Gnome? I think that Gnome is kind of like Dos running behind
Windows, but am not sure.  Is GTK like the Windows shell? how
hard would it be to put a new "shell" on Ubuntu (or whatever
Linux I go with)? Do all Linux versions use GTK, if indeed it is
a shell? Thanks again for your help.



Have a great day,
Alex





_______________________________________________
Orca-list mailing list
Orca-list gnome org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]