Zipspeak is running just wonderfully on my Toshiba Libretto. I'm a newbie,
but I try to read everything I can find.
If you're looking for something PDA-like, let me suggest this machine; they
frequently sell now for as low as $350 on Ebay and have very popular support
on the net. Toshiba still has DOS/Windows drivers available and many Linux
enthusiasts use these mini-notebooks as well. Google for Libretto and you'll
find weeks of reading!
The Libretto is about the size of a videocassette and weighs a bit over a
pound. Mine is a 75MHZ Pentium, but later models are faster. Even so, after
running Windows for a decade, I'm amazed how fast Linux is!
It is truly cool to have Linux in my purse. The numeric keypad is
integrated; you have to hold down the "FN" key while pressing character
keys. With a little practice, most of the SpeakUp commands can be accessed
by touch typing from the home row.
I haven't had this much fun with computers in years! There is still a lot I
have to figure out, like how to get my PCMCIA ethernet and my other PCMCIA
Wi-fi card working under Linux. And much of the documentation assumes I'm
already a wizard ... but hobbies are supposed to be challenging!
Is the current version of ZipSpeak based on Slackware 8.1? It appears so.
Is there a later version? The maintainer's web page doesn't seem to work. I
know Matt Campbell was the first maintainer, but according to the readme,
the current maintainer is at the non-working URL: www.saqibshaikh.com
The readme that came with Zipspeak said this distribution was especially for
beginners and stated that it would be easy to add additional packages from
the Slackware distribution, and that documentation was included. But now I'm
running ZipSpeak, I can't find documentation on how to add more packages. It
might be there and I'm not looking in the right place. I wouldn't worry
about this so much except that one of the packages that seems to be missing
is Info. All the docs on the net suggest that beginners read info pages. So
I think I need the documentation package to read the documentation!
-- Debee
(Deborah Norling)
Alternate Media Specialist
DeAnza College
Phone: 408-864-5815
Work: norling deborah "AT" deanza.edu
Home: debee "At" jfcl.com
