Re: [orca-list] speakup not speaking

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Justin Harford <blindstein gmail com> wrote:
> Well I think I might have done something to speakup. I probably should not
> have, but I ran updates anyway to see what would happen. Everything seems to
> work okay, orca almost runs better, but speakup seems to have been silenced.
> It does not seem to turn on. 

If you're using it with ESpeak, make sure that the espeakup package is
installed and that the service is enabled. For example
chkconfig espeakup on
should make sure it's included in your boot process, and service espeakup
start should start it manually.

If that doesn't help, dig a little deeper and make sure that the kernel
modules are loaded (there should be instructions on the Speakup site for doing
this).

I should also point out that I've been running Linux for many years, and I've
encountered very few such problems. Those which I have experienced are due to
installing the latest (not yet properly tested and not officially released)
packages. I update my systems very regularly to the latest "testing" or
"unstable" version of Debian, which have not been well debugged and are
not ready for release - they're meant for testing.

I'm not sure what distribution you're using, but if you want updates that
don't break your system, choose a distribution which has a very conservative
update policy. If you are trying to run the very latest, untested software
then you are assumed to know what yu are doing, and it's your responsibility
entirely if it doesn't work and you get burned.

> I am getting the impression that linux really isn't something that you can
> just casually walk in to, unless you just don't care to have a computer that
> runs well. I'm going to look for some "linux for dummies" manuals -- I doubt
> if they will help me with the speakup problem -- but it might be useful.
> Right now when I read online instructions, I don't really understand any of
> the terminology that they are using, so in the end the online documentation
> is proving rather useless.

If you want to be able to administer your system competently, you'll need to
read a few good books on the subject and experiment. I recommend that you
start by learning to use the shell and a text editor properly, then improving
your system administration skills. Some suggested reading:

William E. Shotts, Jr., The Linux Command Line
http://www.linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

and an old book which is rather out of date but still somewhat useful:
Paul Sheer, Linux: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition
http://rute.2038bug.com/

Another helpful reference is The Linux Cookbook:
http://www.dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_toc.html

Of the commercially published books available in accessible formats, I
recommend Aeleen Frisch, Essential System Administration, 3rd ed., published
by O'Reilly. Another truly great book, also published by O'Reilly, is
Mike Loukides, Tim O'Reilly, Jerry Peek and Shelley Powers, Unix Power Tools,
3rd ed.

The essential point is to start with a book or two that you like, and continue
learning from there.

Good luck and have fun.