Re: [orca-list] orca/linux new user questions

[Steve Holmes <steve holmes88 gmail com>]

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As to which distribution of Linux being most compatible with Orca can
sometimes be linked to personal opinion and how much outside work the
user is willing to do for the best experience.  I hear that
Opensolaris, which isn't an actual Linux but another variant of Unix,
has a live CD that is supposed to auto install with Orca without a
bunch of twittling around.  Debian is also a good distribution which
includes all the packages you need.  However to get Debian installed
independently with speech you would need an hardware speech
synthesizer for the beginning stages.  GRML is another distribution
which has a live CD that will also work with software speech and is
Debian package based.  There is also Ubuntu which has a "out of the
box solution" but many people lately have been experiencing sound
issues so I would probably shy away from that one.  I'm not sure where
Fedorah stands at this moment but it also has a self-install
capability but I think one would need an external/hardware synthesizer
to get started.  Once into Orca, then software speech is no problem.

Personally, I like Slackware because of its simple package structure
and general ease of editting system configurations.  But it doesn't
have Gnome natively available.  I have to install Gnome separately
from another mini distro; for that, I chose Dropline Gnome.  I'm an
experienced Linux user for over ten years so haven't generally minded
the extra steps I went through to use Slackware.

This may all sound like rambling but it is really hard to explain
"which distro to use."  Also, you asked if it is realistic to swith
off the windows box completely.  Depending on what you generally would
use the computer for, this is definitely possible.  If you don't need
to use any application that *HAS* to run in windows, then by all
means, go for Linux if you want.  Web surfing and e-mail are plenty
easy to use in Linux, both in the text console and in Gnome/orca.
With Orca, you can use Open Office to do spreadsheet, word processing
documents and databases with considerable ease.  The list goes on but
I think it is quite realistic today for a blind person to be able to
go with Linux and not to have to use Windows anymore.  There's only a
few situations where one cannot use Linux to do some activities such
as get Audible books from www.audible.com, download audio books from
Recordings for the Blind, Remote desktop connections to a computer at
work that runs Windows, etc.  It might be necessary for you to keep
that windows box around for those limitted activities but the rest of
the time, go for it!

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 02:30:44AM -0400, w9fyi cox net wrote:
> Hello,
> I am just beginning my travel down the road of Orca/linux use, and hoping to find some sense of dirrection 
> as to where to start.  Ideally i would like to replace my use of windows with Linux.  The bottom line is 
> I'm tired of being chained at the wallet to the screen-reader manufacturers and I'd like to be able to 
> brake the chains that bind me to microsoft.  Is this a realistic expectation?  If yes, then what flavor of 
> Linux/Linux is most compatible with  Orca, out of the box?  Again I do apologize in advance if this has 
> been covered.  Thanks in advance for any help 
> ---- Msg sent via Cox.net- http://cox.net
> _______________________________________________
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> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
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