how do you use oralux to get linux installed on a second machine? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Debee Norling" <debee@xxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 10:52 PM Subject: Thoughts on newbies getting stuck > Since there are a lot of new beginners on this list, I'll make this > comment > which is already obvious to the more advanced users. > > If you are new to Linux and struggling to get it installed and/or want to > play with software speech, you should try fooling around with Oralux > www.oralux.org > > This is a Knoppix-based distro intended for blind users. It will not > affect > any data on your hard disk as it boots from the CD-rom. However anything > you want to preserve, such as scripts, text files or downloaded data can > easily be saved to a hard disk, a USB flash drive or even a floppy. > > You can test whether you can burn an iso because you must do so to get > Oralux going. You can also test if your Bios would boot an installation > CD, > because if Oralux boots, then an install CD should as well. You can run a > batch file on the CD under Windows to create a floppy disk which will boot > the CD if you don't have sighted help to poke around in your BIOS > settings. > > You can test whether software speech will work on your system because it > boots up talking. You can learn Unix commands without messing anything up. > You can try examining interesting output, such as the results of dmesg, > because Knoppix is so good at hardware detection. This helped me figure > out > what modules my hardware needed. > > Oralux also supports hardware synthesizers so you can try out your ports. > It supports most network cards without you having to do anything. It has > oss > and alsa drivers so you can hear the difference. It has emacspeak so you > can start learning emacs. It has a good FAQ that answers many beginner > questions I had when getting started a couple of years ago. > > Oralux supports a Braille display which is great if software speech fails > to > work and you have a Braille display. Braille is also great for reading > those > darned case-specific man pages. Speakup isn't part of Oralux but > what you learn using Oralux helps you install a better distro with > speakup. > You will discover for example that software speech is sluggish, and that > some synthesizers will not work with some sound cards. For example on a > modern laptop, using the oss drivers, flite simply squeaks at me, whereas > it > works beautifully on an older system. Using the alsa drivers it sounds > great, though a bit slow, and on the same older system, it just crashes > the > entire thing. > > You can try typical tasks like FTP fetching files, writing C code or shell > scripts, browsing the web or designing a web page using tools under Oralux > and you can borrow any PC, such as one in a school computer lab to do so. > > Oralux isn't going to replace Fedora, but the idea is that you use it to > get > started. Also if you have to work on a computer you don't own you can > still > use Linux with access. I currently use it to fool with emacs as I'm more > proficient in vi. I use it to access machines in the computer lab where I > work that aren't running any access technology. I used it to recently > rescue > a system I'd managed to really screw up. I used it to telnet to my tivo to > fix a problem that made it crash regularly, and I used it to telnet to > another machine where I'd accidently made it boot up no longer talking. > More advanced users have depended on Oralux as a launching pad to get a > full > distro installed on a second machine. I have also used it to test if I'd > gotten ssh running correctly on another computer that can only run NetBSD. > > I have also used Oralux with my machine that has only one serial port so I > could have both speech and Braille for troubleshooting a problem. > > --Debee > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
