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Re: [orca-list] What distro would people like me to cover in some audiowalkthroughs

On 03/02/2010 04:48 PM, al Sten-Clanton wrote:

Hi, Michael:

Concerning Fedora, how far did you get in the installation?  An old howto on
installing the speakup-modified version of Fedora notes that, before
rebooting to run the new system, you should go into a console and use
chkconfig to turn firstboot off.  Earlier versions apparently required
listing the runlevels in the command.  When I used it last,though, it was
just

/sbin/chkconfig firstboot off

Does this help, or am I missing something in the process you're doing?
I haven't tried what you suggest but it sounds like what needs seeing to. The only other thing would be adding a user while you are on the LiveCD as once rebooted you won't have speakup and gnome probably will refuse root to log in to gnome. 


I infer from your message that the live CD installer is accessible via orca
in Fedora 12.  Is this correct?  It was not with Fedora 10 or 11.  I ask,
even though I don't expect to return to using Fedora soon.  I don't want
Linux without Speakup.  My efforts to compile Speakup into the kernel with
recent, unmodified versions of Fedora failed, and I had trouble getting it
to work as modules in Fedora 11.  Regarding the new, speakup-modified
version of 12, I'm avoiding it for essentially the reason you are:  I'm
disgusted with the way the Fedora folks apparently have reduced the
usefulness of the text installer.  This is especially annoying because there
are things I like about Fedora, and it was the first distribution I used
seriously.
The installer isn't perfect, you need to start orca as root to access it, otherwise orca claim the liveinst application is inaccessible, don't know if this was the issue in previous releases. Also you may want to install espeak and the gnome-speech driver for espeak into the LiveCD environment as by default it uses festival and the lag is noticeable, some parts of liveinst are slow enough with orca and espeak (eg. country selection), festival would make it extremely unresponsive. I have sent a message to the fedora livecd list to see what sort of response I will get to adding accessibility to the installer (it mainly focuses on firstboot but I mention there are minor issues else where). I tried to use a tone of I want to help, I await response and so won't continue to draw conclusions until then. It is for the reason of speakup modified, etc why I had never looked at fedora in the past (redhat say about speakup and how accessible it makes their system yet they don't provide it and the stock kernel makes it difficult to install speakup). As for text console access more generally, as the machine I intend to use will never (extremely unlikely to have a hardware synth connected, there is a serial port but its a laptop and I don't want to have to carry bits and pieces round with me) userspace screen readers like YASR don't seem so bad. Also at least on Linux based systems I also have brltty for my Braille display in text consoles. 

Michael Whapples


Al

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On
Behalf Of Michael Whapples
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 10:25 AM
To: Orca-list
Subject: [orca-list] What distro would people like me to cover in some
audiowalkthroughs

Hello,
As my GRML install has become old I think its time for some new audio
walkthroughs from me. I have to say after some use of GRML on HD I don't
know whether I would advise it for HD installations (NOTE: GRML is an
excellent liveCD and I would recommend it for text based LiveCD work eg.
system recovery, etc). In fact look at my comments on ArchLinux for an
interesting use I may put GRML to.

This means I am now looking at what other distribution to use for the audio
walkthroughs. Has anyone any suggestions of which they would like to be
done. Below you will find some notes on what I have looked at and views,
etc, I would suggest reading that before suggesting a distro to be covered.

I thought I had managed to reach a decision on what distribution I would use
for some orca audio walkthroughs but hit a bit of a unexpected problem with
installing fedora from the liveCD, the "first boot"
application which is certainly inaccessible with no obvious work around
(NOTE: the speakup modified fedora won't do, I will be installing it on a
system already with windows XP on the disk and the text installer would
clear the whole disk).

An alternative I had been considering is OpenSolaris, regardless of my view
of oracle there currently is a technical show stopper for me with it as on
the computer I intend to use X won't start on the latest development builds
(I suspect its the intel graphics issues which were introduced around b130).
I believe they intend to fix the issue with intel graphics by the release,
however that's getting quite close. If it can be fixed by the release then
it is back in the list of choices.

Another one I have given serious consideration is ArchLinux. This takes a
very different approach to the others I am considering, although it probably
fits better with my personal views, build up the system the way you want
rather than rip apart a large default system and fight it to work the way
you want. While I like build it up approaches, I am concerned whether it
works for a audio walkthrough as the system can have so many possible
configurations. My other concern is how well supported ArchLinux is, by this
I mean third party software (an example would be skype don't make a package
for it, but this skype example doesn't work fully as there are skype
packages in the community repository). Actually that skype example probably
demonstrates that my concern may not be real, there seems to be enough
software in the repositories for most (if not all) general desktop usage.

To install ArchLinux I probably will do an install using the GRML LiveCD,
yes its possible, reason why, its a more full system to be working with
while installing (eg. nice handy applications like grml-network to configure
your network, etc).

Now for the distros I ruled out fairly early on:
* OpenSuse: They seem to go their own way for things with no clear reason
(eg. SBL instead of brltty (SBL lacks for me as it doesn't seem to support
USB Braille displays whereas brltty has had support for USB for years),
gnome's menus (why do they make that odd menu/application to replace the
standard gnome ones, it just makes it unfamiliar), etc).
* Debian: I am saying this a bit reluctantly, but essentially the problem
seems to be stable too old, testing and unstable too unreliable for the step
by step nature of an audio walkthrough.
* Ubuntu: Just don't like it, too many reasons really to list.
* Slackware: While installation can be done with speakup, there is no
software speech option for install and I don't have the resources to provide
an espeakup enabled slackware install CD. Also possible issues with
installing gnome as you need a third party gnome distribution but this is
minor compared to the install issue.
* Gentoo: While a nice idea the compile from source thing gets to you after
a time, too slow to install/upgrade packages for little gain in running the
system.
* Vinux: Don't really believe in the idea of specially developed systems, I
am sure that accessibility can be well integrated into mainstream distros
(OpenSolaris is an example where it has been done well). I believe the route
of educating on accessibility is better in the long term, if distros don't
know about the accessibility concerns they may do something which makes your
adapting task much harder in the future without even realising the impact of
their decision.

OK, enough from me, now for your suggestions.

Michael Whapples
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