Re: [orca-list] New ubuntu install

[mohammad suliman <mohmad s93 gmail com>]

                hi,

a general tip for Ubuntu users is to change swappiness from 60% to 90%. 
60% is the default, but for desktop users it is not recommended. this 
will improve your system speed significantly with multi tasking. many 
articles on Google ex plane how to do this, if you need more help with 
that, let me know. be careful thou when following the steps, I think a 
mistake could damage your system.
thanks for the steps to update orca to latest version! I am running 
Ubuntu 14.04 on a virtual machine with gnome 3.10. according to Google, 
gnome on this system can't be updated, or updating is not recommended. 
so, I thought that i will remain with orca 3.10.
thanks,
Mohammad

On 1/24/2016 8:22 PM, B. Henry wrote:
> Get speechd-up or espeakup so you can use speakup in consoles.
> If you have a 64bit installation then get the 32bit qt-at-spi package in addition to the normal 64bit 
> qt-atj-spi for the 64bit  system. That will let
> you use skype, and maybe some other 32bit only qt using software.
> Mostly beyond this it depends on what you do with you computer, and experimentingwith programs to see which 
> you prefer.
> There are a number of good accessible media players, but some have some issues that make them a bit less than 
> ideal with or a. I find myself mostly
> using vlc and mplayer or mplayer2 using the gnome-mplayer front end in the GUI. Audacious is small and seems 
> pretty flexible,  but although I've never
> really had any complaints about it I've never used it much.
> Totem, called videos in the program listings i.e. apps menus , does less than it used to a couple of years 
> ago, and I prefered its older interfaces, but
> is still very reliable.  I've used quite a few more. Rhythmbox has always had some issues both positive and 
> negative, banshee tends t ave less than
> consistent behavior with orca but can do a lot, one I've not used much that may be pretty good is called 
> deadbeef, exaile  went rogue  on me and stuck
> on mp3 frames sometimes, one of these blowing out one of my netbook's speakers/never used it again after that 
> although others seem to use it with no
> such nastiness; and there are others I've used that work perfectly with orca that I'm not mentioning. I'd 
> probably say VLC is a good choice for anyone
> as it is so flexible from both the command line and the GUI. You may need to specify the vlx-nox package 
> along with vlc when installing to get the full
> CLI funconality. I'm still not completely decided, but am pretty sure that mplayer2 is a better bet than the 
> original mplayer.
> There are several commandline only players that are popular and good if you are in to scripting.
> If you do research, write school or work papers or reports, translate or just read and like words then I'd 
> install dictd and some of the available
> dictionary databases and translaters for it. I always get quite a few dictionaries that work with this 
> framework
> dict-devil dict dict-elements dictfmt dict-foldoc dict-gcide dict-jargon dict-vera dict-wn 
> dict-freedict-eng-spa dict-freedict-spa-eng
> dict-freedict-eng-lat dict-bouvier dict-freedict-eng-fra
> for example. There are packages for other languages and a thesaurus. Just type a word in to a terminal or 
> console, e.g. dict computer and you get a list
> of definitions and translations for coomputer. If you get several databases then you should usually use dict 
> with a pager like less, e.g. dict
> computer|less
> Personally I use a lot of custom keyboard shortcuts, but some people don't. I fiind it well worth the time to 
> set them up for the programs I use most
> and to open a couple of folders I often need to access that have longer paths.
> Some browser extensions are important to me, e.g. webvisum to solve captchas, (firefox only), lastpass to 
> store all my passwords encrypted for access
> with any popular GUI browser, for our purposes firefox and google-chroome if you install it which I always 
> do. You must have the chromevox extension to
> use chrome as it does not work with orca.
> Oh, make sure you have enough codecs for you media files. mp3s and many other popular formats are not 
> playable by default unless you selected the
> install nonfree extras item duriing the initial installation.
> Do a quuick google for your specific Ubuntu version to see what the codec packs are called as they have 
> changed slightly between versions over the
> years. I think there is still one called ubuntu-nonfree-extras that includes soome of the important ones as 
> well as a few popular fonts. You may run in
> to situations where you need to grab another codec later on depending on what programs you use, especially if 
> you convert from one media format to
> another, and sometimes those situations can get complicated as one codec can not be installed at the same 
> time as another, but if you just play ppopular
> formats then you should not get in to these situations often if at ever.
> Again, we can recommend a program for a specific task or type of task, or some add on or configuration it 
> needs, but with out knowing what you do and do
> not do with your computer it is hard to know where to start and when to stop.
>
>
>