[orca-list] Some notes about using opensolaris, may be useful to others

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
I have some notes about my experiences on trying to use opensolaris 
which may be useful to others. I probably should learn to use the Wiki, 
but as I haven't I felt here may be better than not at all.

First of all, I used the notes about accessible install at the 
opensolaris website, and things went fairly well as described there. I 
don't know if for the actual installation process I could add more. The 
only thing I could suggest is a note about how to alter the audio levels 
on the live CD, although this is fairly standard gnome stuff.

One problem I found on my installed system is that the audio levels were 
not being saved and so when ever I shutdown the machine it would not 
restore the volume settings next time I booted the machine. To solve 
this I used solmix (http://solmix.sf.net) which is a command line volume 
control which I added to the session start up (my command in the start 
up is
/usr/bin/solmix 10
use solmix -h for help message on usage). This solves that.

I mentioned before that eclipse is not available for opensolaris, I got 
that wrong, or at least you can create a suitable version. If you want 
eclipse on opensolaris look at solipse (http://code.google.com/p/solipse).

The package manager GUI tool is accessible, but I uestion how productive 
you would be with it as lists seem to be dynamically updated and so orca 
becomes slow to respond whilst navigating. I would suggest using pkg 
from the command line.

I have noticed some problems when orca has been set to automatically 
start. It seems sometimes multiple versions or something are being 
launched and that one of the instances doesn't seem to be the current 
user (as it seems to think it has no settings). When this occurs, it 
also seems to be that the version which is actually reading the screen 
finds some applications are inaccessible (standard applications like 
volume control, preferred applications, etc).

Also I haven't been able to get the included java access bridge working, 
I may try downloading another version and compiling it from source 
(still to be done).

Hope this is useful to someone.

Michael Whapples