Hello,
GRML includes speakup (including everything to use it with software
speech output) and brltty for speech and Braille access to the text
consoles. Both of these can be started by passing options to the boot
loader or after booting. For speakup and software speech output give
the swspeak option at the boot loader, for Braille output you can give
the blind option (IE. for both speech and Braille the boot line would
be:
grml swspeak blind
). For more details and other boot options look at the GRML wiki and
the cheatcodes. For an example of booting GRML with accessibility my
audio walk through for installing GRML to hard disk gives a good
example http://www.mwhapples.plus.com/linux/audio/grml_install.ogg
(although it refers to GRML 2008.11 it is still relevant for the
current release, things haven't changed that much).
Another extra thing is if your computer can boot from USB then you can
use grml2usb to create a bootable USB drive which automatically starts
accessibility (look at how to specify default boot options).
Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Øyvind Lode wrote:
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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