Re: [orca-list] Small talking distro

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

I'm a big fan of straight Debian as well.  The problem you may run into though is UEFI compatibility.  The 
last time this issue came up for me was about a year and a half ago and they didn't have their act together 
as of yet so, I went with Ubuntu.  I'm responding on this pretty late in the thread so, my apologies if your 
hardware can't support what I'm about to recommend:

A dual core 1.2 ghz system with 4gb ram does nicely with:

Ubuntu 14.04 running gnome 3.10/3.12 with Orca 3.14 and Emacspeak 39 and whatever Speakup version comes with 
the Ubuntu kernel.  I can have Speakup in the console if I activate it from a gnome terminal session with:

sudo modprobe speakup soft_start=1
sudo espeakup

The only issue I have had is that it can sometimes cause speech-dispatcher to crackle when I go from the 
console back to the GUI but I fix it by running spd-conf in the terminal and hitting enter a bunch of times 
until I hear "Speech dispatcher is working."  I then alt f2 and type orca --replace  and the crackle is gone.


It positively zooms when I run Mate on it.  My wife prefers Mate, my son and I prefer Gnome shell.  I started 
out wanting to use it as a straight server but, she started trying to use the desktop so, I beefed up my 
firewall and turned it into a workstation/server which made her happy.  (When mama ain't happy, ain't nobody 
happy is way true for us with the computer situation in our house.) I have no complaints.  We all use it and 
it works just fine.  Everyone but me is sighted so, we all use the screen reader on/off hotkey and are able 
to share a machine for desktop use and we store our pictures and music on it for access with our tablets and 
smartphones when we are on our home network.  As debian distros go, it's very user-friendly when you just 
want to do minimal configuration and hit the ground running but, since it is Linux, you can still come back 
and customize your heart out when you have the time.

Alex M



-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of B. Henry
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 12:56 PM
To: Kyle; orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Small talking distro

They changed the command(s) to enable speakup with software speech, espeak of course, between 2010 and 2011 I 
think it was. 
The last release I remember using was either 2011.95 or more likely 2012.05. I am not sure of exact name 
punctuation. 
You could find old releases on the GRML website last time I checked. If you find out that the newer GRML's 
dop not have working speakp make sure you get the "full" image, or what ever they call their larger one. 
I did have trouble with the combined 32/64bit (they call it 96), image on at least one machine, but there 
were still images that were arch specific then. 
It will not have Orca of course, and especialy if the latest images do not have speakup GRML would be a poor 
choice. It is just Debian with an extensive selection of admin and rescue tools. You'd be much better off 
with straight Debian as GRML is not optimized for installing to hard-drive as a primary OS/distro. 
As C.J. mentions, Vinux4 is a viable option. You will not be able to upgrade to anything close to latest 
Orca, so if best firefox support is important to you you may want to try something else, but in my experience 
Vinux4 is very solid, and accessibility is excellent for most programs. After installing it make sure to 
upgrade your packages, but do not accidentally let it try and upgrade to trusty, or any of the non-lts Ubuntu 
releases if using the GUI update checker.
I'd recommend you going with a Debian based distro as from what I have read from you that is where your 
experience lies. 
The computer in question is sinigle core, and unless you upgraded RAM is probablly marginal, so I'd consider 
Debian with mate as your desktop. If you can posibly afford a bit of memory put at least 2GB in there, I 
think it'll hold up to 4. I have run Vinux4 reasonably well with only 1GB of RAM and a slow dual core CPu, 
but a bit more will help you a lot. Also avoid all unnecesary multi-tasking. 
 
-- 
     B.H.
   Registerd Linux User 521886


  Kyle wrote:
Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 12:29:46PM -0400

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember reading that they either 
> disabled Speakup in grml or took it out completely by disabling the 
> staging drivers in the kernel. Maybe they put everything right again, 
> but I do remember people mentioning this problem.
> Sent from my constellation
> --
> "Don't judge my disability until you are able to see my ability."
> ~Kyle: https://kyle.tk/
> My chunk of the internet: https://chunkhost.com/r/Kyle 
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at 
> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
> how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out how to help at 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp