[orca-list] Orca Gnome - A Great Job!

["Jeffrey Malewski" <jmlwsk toast net>]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to say Thank You for your outstanding work and making Linux accessable for those of us who are blind or visually impaired. In late 2007 I had a look at Ubuntu and Linux Mint as an alternative to Windows for the computers I was rebuilding for resale. I had issues with both while trying to do an accessable install, mostly with the "split screen" magnification. I joined the Mint forums and exchanged several emails with Willie Walker regarding the issue. 2008 was a hectic year, and I didn't have much time for building computers. I did have the opportunity to chat with a young man I met through the Toledo Sight Center. He is working tech support for Buckeye Cable and is running Ubuntu on both his home pc and his laptop. He only uses Windows at work. Guy Lutz is totally blind and his OS of choice is Ubuntu with Orca Gnome running. He told me about the "full screen" magnification that was part of Orca. He told me of a Ubuntu release for the blind and visually impaired, and I was hoping that would soon be incorporated into the Mint release. I was unable to find Orca in the Mint 7 release, and assumed the Mint team had dropped the Gnome desktop deferring to the KDE desktop instead. I've learned since then that it is still there, but has to be installed through the package manager. 2009 took me into gardening and growing my own tobacco. The purchase of commercial seed in January 2010 led me to start the "Black Swamp Tobacco Co" and I origionally intended to host the web site frome home. Windows doesn't give me the support I need for the Apache http and email servers, I can run one but not both, so now that my crop is in the barn I've taken another look at Linux. I've tried several of the Ubuntu releases, smoking a stick of Ram in "full screen" mode on Ubuntu 10.10 and backed up from there trying to find one less resource demanding. I had login issues with both server editions I looked at and ended up at 9.04. Apparently I missed something during the install and lacked root privileges so I was unable to configure the servers. Last night I found myself at your home page looking for another OS that supports Orca. Your reference to Vinux was a big help!  I've downloaded the ISO and run the installation which was fully accessable every step of the way.

 

IT'S REAL!  I'm no longer trapped in Windows. I hope to get Apache installed today, and get the website up and runing in the next day or two. Once I do, I'll be glad to donate server space or anything else I can do to help. I'm also going to contact the Vinux team and offer to host a download mirror for them.

 

Thank you for some great work. You guys are awesome!

 

Jeff Malewski

jmlwsk toast net