[orca-list] Accessible linux system for a MacOS user

[Mewtamer <mewtamer gmail com>]

Just going to toss my two cents American into the ring...

Regardless of Distro, I'm pretty sure running the absolutely latest
Orca, commonly referred to as Orca Master is always going to require
regularly pulling from the Git repository and going through the
process to build it yourself as detailed in the tutorial recently
posted by Milton. However, this is true of just about any opensource
project.

And yes, Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS often contain outdated packages,
both for Orca and for pretty much everything else. This is just part
of their nature as releases that sacrifice being cutting edge in favor
of stability and minimizing the risk that software upgrades will
introduce major bugs. Regular Ubuntu, having only a 6-month release
cycle compared with Ubuntu LTS's 2-year cycle and Debian's "when it's
ready" cycle, typically doesn't have as big a problem with outdated
packages, and Debian Testing, outside of perhaps the feature freeze
stage of the current Debian Testing being prepped to become the new
Debian Stable, usually has packages that are close to the latest
release, and despite technically being a development version, Debian
Testing is often touted as more stable than many distro's stable
releases.

That said, even if you decide to go with Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS,
there is an intermediate option between sticking with a version that
will be horribly outdated by the time of the next Debian Stable or
Ubuntu LTS and regularly pulling and building from Git. This would be
to use Backports.In a nutshell, Backport versions of a given package
are compiled from the software's latest stable release, but build
against the libraries that ship with the target Distro. For example,
Debian testing and Debian Backports might contain the same version of
Orca, but while the Testing version is built against libaries in
Testing, upgrading just Orca to it's Debian Testing Package might
require upgrading all of its dependencies, possibly breaking packages
from Debian Stable that depend on the older versions of those
libaries... meanwhile, the Backports version of Orca would be built
against Debian Stable's libraries, so upgrading Orca from Debian
stable to Debian Backports might only require upgrading a few
dependencies where Orca requires a new version or installing a few new
ones the older Orca didn't need.

I also think it worth noting that many of the updates to Orca are to
address accessibility issues upgrades to other software introduced. In
other words, if you're running a version of Firefox or Chromium that's
just as old as the version of Orca you're using, you probably won't
miss the changes made to Orca to address changes made in newer
versions of Firefox and chromium. Admittedly, not all Orca development
follows this pattern, but the Orca Mailing list does get a lot of
"Program X used to work with Orca, I upgraded X, now I have a problem
using X with Orca" which often leads to Orca getting a patch to work
around some new quirk in x and/or a bug being filed against x.

Anyways, I'm personally sourcing 99% of the software on my system from
Debian Testing, and I'm pretty sure the only way I could run a newer
Orca would be to go the Git route, which doesn't strike me as worth
the effort on account of Firefox-ESR being the only reason I don't
live entirely in text-mode... Though, admittedly, one reason I use
Firefox-ESR instead of the regular Firefox release is that ESR doesn't
change as fast, meaning I'm less likely to run into a Firefox issue
that requiresa upgrade to Orca Master... the other main reason being
that Debian only provides Firefox's regular release in Debian
Unstable.