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Yeah, I know the Debian tools like ept*, dpkg
etc
But I'll probably be completely lost when booting it
up...
No speech and no braille - I'm lost.
How hard is it to enable speech and braille on the
console?
I would possibly say then go for debian or vinux for installing to
your system. If you use debian for servers you hopefully know a little of the
debian stuff (eg. apt, etc). As for GRML (www.grml.org) its due to its lack of gnome by
default I say users should be familiar with the command line as they will need
to use it to install gnome and using debian unstable isn't always the easiest
way of getting gnome (unmet dependencies, etc). So yes gnome can be installed on
GRML and it can be installed from packages GRML really comes in to its own on
the command line. The other good thing with GRML is to use it as a live CD, so
even if you don't want to install it to hard disk you may find it a great rescue
CD.
Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Øyvind Lode wrote:
I use debian on my servers, all running text
mode.
I am looking for a distro which is flexible, where I can
learn more, much more.
I need web browsing, email and a terminal
window.
Also I want to do some bash
programming.
Something tells me that I need X and a desktop
environment to successfully use the web, but the other tasks is much better
using a terminal.
I am tired of using cygwin to access my
servers...
So I will go for vinux, it will probably not replace
windows, but it would be cool to run Linux for the tasks mentioned
above.
OpenSolaris also seems exciting, but I could not find my
video card on the HCL...
GRML, never heard of this distro
though.
I like the idea of distros focusing on the command line
so I will remember to check out GRML.
I love the
command line and I would like to learn much more about it, and UNIX/Linux in
general.
Are you not running X at all on your GMRL
box?
Hello,
There are
quite a number of linux distributions which would be suitable and good with
accessibility, trying to say if one is "best" is difficult. Sometimes you
should be considering what you want the system to do, eg. is it going to be a
general desktop system, is it primarily for multimedia, is it going to be a
web server, etc, this may influence your choice more. Due to this you are
unlikely to get a good definite answer to such a question. Below I make a few
notes on my experiences: (please note all these as far as I know support
different keyboard layouts and for braille translation you want to look at
liblouis, liblouisxml or may be nfbtrans)
Vinux is a linux distribution
specifically built for accessibility. Before people start saying about not
liking specifically built things for visually impaired, vinux is based on
other distributions (debian in the case of vinux 2.0) and only modifies it to
be more accessible by altering some of the defaults. As it is based on debian
you should be able to use all the standard debian packages, so you shouldn't
be particularly restricted in software available for the
distribution.
However if you feel vinux is restricting or you really
don't want to use something specifically designed for accessibility then you
could just use debian. As vinux is based on debian you should be able to
achieve the same results with the accessibility in debian, it may just require
some extra initial setting up. The advantage of using plain debian is that you
may be able to get a better initial set up for what you want the computer to
do (eg. if it should be a desktop system, web server, etc).
I
personally use GRML, however it really is for those who like the command line
and possibly not the best for people new to linux (it is based on debian
unstable and so sometimes you get broken packages, etc). Again GRML is based
on debian and so can make use of the debian packages.
A significant
part of orca development is done on opensolaris and the accessibility
integration seems to be good. However you should note that opensolaris is not
linux, its based on the solaris flavour of unix. As solaris is different to
linux you will find that certain software available on linux will not work on
solaris, this tends to be binary packages such as IBM's viavoice. Also
opensolaris supports less hardware than linux, but I think this is gradually
getting better. Should these disadvantages not affect you then opensolaris
might be a good choice.
Ubuntu gets mentioned quite a bit, personally I
wouldn't use ubuntu, but for some it seems to satisfy their needs.
Accessibility is included in ubuntu by default, but quite regularly there are
questions to this list about accessibility not working in ubuntu. Whether
these problems are due to the quality of ubuntu's accessibility or whether its
to do with the number of users (which quite a number seem to be new to linux)
I will leave to you decide by looking back through the list archives and
searching the internet. Ubuntu does try to help new users by making things
easy, but by doing this it makes it less flexible and should you want to do
something outside the defaults you may find yourself fighting the system (this
is one of the reasons I don't use it).
There are plenty of other linux
distributions I haven't mentioned, eg. redhat, opensuse and all the other RPM
based systems, gentoo, etc but I felt it was only fair for me to comment on
systems I have actually tried.
Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59,
Øyvind Lode wrote:
Hello
Which Linux
distro is "best" on accessibility?
Which distros
are most commonly used by members on the Orca list?
I am looking for
a distribution were Orca is started automatically or very easy to start,
just pressing a shortcut key etc.
I need speech
and braille immediately to be able to interact with the
OS.
I also need
support for non-US keyboard layouts and braille translation
tables.
To be more
specific:
Norwegian keyboard layout and
braille
table.
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