[orca-list] Fairly new user is ready to Dive? Into? Linux!

["Chris Gilland" <cgilland1 carolina rr com>]

Hello guies.  Well, believe it or not, I've used UBuntu before, yes, however
really have not been that willing up until now to read documentation, or
really get involved on this list and ask questions.  For one, I have made an
account on launchpad.net so I can report bugts if needed, plus have been
reading different forums etc.  I gotta say one thing to Storm Dragon if he's
still on here.  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! for your blog!  You cannot
know along the way how much it's helped me with certain things.

I have been enjoying my Wubi install so much that I am  thinking about
literally installing it fresh on my inspiron system.  I do have a few
questions though.

OK, firstly and foremost, I am having some odd behavior with Orca.  It's
nothing too too terribly bad, but it's enough to be down right irritating.

I might need to update to the latest version of Orca, but I'm not totally
sure.  I when to the orca wiki and looked at how it instructed to build
gnome-orca, but it's not quite seeming for whatever reason to work.
Normally I would give you all the exact error msgs I'm getting but, I for
one don't yet have Evolution setup and frankly am a little leery to do so,
as there are certain things I get via e-mail that I must act upon, and I'm
not sure yet how in Linux I would, and being some of them are for work...
Basically what I need is for someone to not give me a web site, but if you
could actually either type out for me or pasxte from a doc into an e-mail
exactly in terminal what to type to see what version I have and how to get
orca up to date.  I know, read the manual, I feel so bad asking you all to
help.  Believe me though, I have red it, I swear to god, but just do not
understand this.  Updating Orca is a bit more advanced than where my Linux
knowledgte right now is.  I used to say here's my root login, just telnet
and do it for me.  I'm never ever gonna learn that way though.  As you can
see, I have a totally differeent attitude than when I was on this list
before.  Im determined, I wanna learn, but you all are gonna have to
understand.  I actually mentally have a bit of a learning developmental
problem, so sometimes reading comprehention doesn't work with my style of
learning.  I tend to be more, just tell me what to type and do, character by
character, and let me copy what you say.  Sometimes docs work, but it just
depends on what I'm doing.  In this case I just don't get it.  I must say
for that I'm a bit humilliated, as I feel so low compared to most of you
geeks who know this stuff like white on rice.  Almost makes me feel a bit
shamed honestly that I don't know as much.  and I already've broken my wubi
about 10 times in the last week by doing undoubtedly, stupid things, so, I'd
rather, being my system is actually cookin quite good now and I have it
really customized with some pkgs I really like, I'd really rather not have
to do all this stuff again from ground1 if I can prevent it.

OK, wsecond questions which kind a ties back into my first.  Empathy
Messenger.  OK, it's reading, but it's really not reading well at all.  the
main buddy window reads, and the menu bar does too, and the account setup
window does, but when in a conversation window, nothing reads.  I honestly
can't even tell if my IM's are being sent when I hit enter.  I don't even
hear the dubbum asending sound telling me so.  For now I downgraded with
aptitude back to pidgin until I figure out what the deal is.  I got
absolutely no issue putting empathy back on here.  In fact, I'd love to, and
actually would prefer it over Pidgin, but, if it won't read...  I wonder if
that is cause I need to update Orca.  I know supposedly in the latest build
of Orca a ton of things, I hear were done to make it really work way way
better.  I dono how even to see the version of Orca I have.  wasn't it just
orca -v?

I suppose I should get off my lazy bum bum go in there and look rather than
asking you all.  Bingo!  2.30.0!  That's what I have, 2.30.0.  and, I'm
running this on Wubi Ubuntu 10.04.

My final question is I have created my .orbitrc file as follows

chris ubuntu:~$  sudo su

root ubuntu:~#  cat> ~/.orbitrc << eof
ORBIIOPIPv4=1
ORBIIOPUNIX=0
eof

root ubuntu:~#  exit

chris ubuntu:~$

ok, that worked for doing things like

gedit ~/.speech-dispatcher/conf/speechd.conf

What however isn't! working, is things like going in my panel to the system
menu/administration/software sources.  Or, if updates pop up automatically
to download/install, then Orca stops talking when those windows are up.

I know about the sudoers files.

I did in a terminal:

export editor=nano

once done, I did:

sudo su

once in as root, I did:

visudo

now's where I'm getting stuck.

I'm finding the line that says something to the effect of

Defaults env_reset

I hit the end key, that's e n d, not the letter n. to move to the end of the
line, and then hit enter to go to a new line.

I've tried several different possibilities found in the wiki but none work.

I've tried passing ORBIT_SOCKETDIR

I've also tried GTK_MODULES

I've tried both with

Defaults:chris

as well as just Defaults

without the colon user name.

so basically I've even tried both ways adding both of those variables. every
combination I've tried isn't working.

Yes I did reboot.

I've tried basically the following syntax.

Defaults:chris env_keep+="GTK_MODULES"

I then hit ctrl+x in Nano save the file with the same name, it presents no
errors, then I reboot.

Again, my ~/.orbitrc file works, as now I hear orca in things that I use
sudo on to edit, etc. but those admin apps still like software update,
software sources etc. are not reading at all.  in fact Orca is rendered
useless in any! window, and every panel until I alt f4 outta that
administration window.

Please can someone help me out.;  Aside that and updating Orca, those really
are the only two things keeping me from diving into Linusx full blown and
chucking windows on my inspiron.

Chris.