[orca-list] First steps experience with Orca on Ubuntu.

[Pawel Urbanski <pawel e-urbanski com>]

Hi Everyone,
I'm writing a few thoughts and ideas after getting started with Orca
when looking alternatives to Windows.
I am definitely a power user - code to some extend, but not as my
first language so to say.

Getting started instructions:
Documentation would benefit from updates, which I will be glad to
provide. I had some problems with making BRLTTY to work. I had to
install brltty-speechd, which is an API integration between BRLTTY and
speech dispatcher. After following BRLTTY instructions I finally setup
the launch script and configured my Braille display.
Rewriting the documentation to provide more information about BRLTTY
setup woudl be useful.

Desktop environments:
GNOME, GNOME with XORG or Ubuntu had issues. After installing GNOME
Flashback and selecting it as in other cases as my session I could
open the applications menu, move around the desktop and so on. I'm
still figuring alternative way to manage preferences for Orca does not
read the panel when launched from the applications menu.

For the record as of December 2020: GNOME 3.38.1 and Orca 3.38 up and
running. I definitely had my share of searching in many places, but
the information was quite old and not so much applicable. I for
example found information about running Mate as a desktop or
occasionally XFCE, but both were 2 years old. Maybe people do use such
setups successfully, but not share them.

As I mentioned at the beginning: I will be happy to rewrite the
documentation with feedback from the community. Software development
is not and very likely will not be my major profession, but it plays a
very important role to some extend in the things I'm doing. The role
of a power user / analyst is in my case enough. I do code, but my
personal projects or simple scratches for developer teams.

I want to switch to Linux for it seems to be very lite on resources as
it's always been, but most of all due to extreme customizability,
which for me means comfort, productivity through optimal ergonomics.

While this post got a bit long, hope to hear back from you - maybe
rewriting the documentation a bit would bring some benefits. Any hints
for the setup are obviously appriciated.

Best,
Pawel