[orca-list] cannot correctly start orca on ubuntu 8.04.x - both real and virtual

["Rich Caloggero" <rjc MIT EDU>]

I've been attempting to setup ubuntu 8.04.1 under VMWare Fusion on the mac, 
however I cannot seem to start orca. It gives me the introductory message 
and quits.  A few times, if I said "orca --no-setup", it would speak the 
initial welcome message, then say "starting orca preferences", and then 
nothing.  I cannot see the screen, so don't know how to get any more info.
Anyone have experience with Orca under VMWare on the mac?

Oddly enough, I've had a similar issue with Orca with Ubuntu 8.04 on real 
hardware; I upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04 using apt-get, and now the only way 
orca will start is if I use the --no-setup switch. In this case, when I 
attempt to run prefs with orca+spaceBar, orca crashes.  Orca never creates 
the .orca directory. My permissions are ok  on my home directory and on the 
.orca directory. I've tried deleting and recreating .orca with no luck. 
I've tried upgrading orca and friends via source and via the new binary 
package repository which Luke set up, but still no joy!  This is a real box 
so I have ssh access from my windows box. I was trying to figure out how to 
get debugging info, but since the .orca directory never gets created, I 
don't know how to enable debugging.

What have I done wrong? It must be me, since others seem to be running 8.04 
with no problem. Yikes...
-- Rich