Janitha, Vinux should work just fine on that kind of setup. I have been working with Vinux for at least 6 months now. I preffer to work with just Braille output not the speakup part, but that is because I have spent so much time using windows with jaws that the espeak speech sounds kind of harsh to me. When you get to a point where you want to install Vinux onto your harddrive, I have discovered a little trick which makes the installer work much better with both speakup and Braille. At the command-line enter the following command: Export DIALOGOPTS="--visit-items" This causes the installer to have proper cursor tracking and greatly simplifies the process. -----Original Message----- From: Janitha Rukmal [mailto:janitharukmal@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 11:57 AM To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca Subject: Re: Speakup and vinux Hi Martin, I was looking for a good linux distribution just like Vinux. I'm from a 3rd world country & so can't afford to move on to some high-end ICor 7 machine. According to your detailed explanation I understand that it will work fine with my Compaq Amada E500 Notebook that has a Pentium 3 processor, 256 mb ram and 20 Gb harddisk a part of which has been dedicated to Windows OS cause it's very hard to survive in Sri Lanka without at least a pirate copy of windows installed on a computer. So, my windows partition has occupied nearly 12 out of 20 Gb I've got in my notebook. What I would like to know is whether it's possible or not for me to go ahead with Vinux with the resources and Harddisk space my notebook possesses. I want to know this in advance cause my ISP is also yearning to cut off a big chunk when I'm downloading something pretty big as this and I want to save it if this distribution is also not going to work for me. Many thanks in advance With best wishes for a happy, prosperous, peaceful and victorious year 2010! Janitha Rukmal On 1/5/2010 11:18 PM, Martin McCormick wrote: > Hello and happy New Year. > > Over the New Year's weekend, I downloaded and installed > the middle-sized version of vinux which is a version of Debian > Linux which boots up speaking and uses speakup as the speech > engine. This is a game changer for me and I think it should be > one for a number of others who own middle-aged to slightly older > computers that are not ready for the attic or the recyclers yet, > but are not bleeding-edge dream machines with gigs of RAM and > terrabytes of disk storage. > > You can read about vinux at > > http://vinux-development.blogspot.com/ > > There is a minimal iso image, a mid-sized one and a set > of 4, I think, CDROM images for a complete Linux installation > from CD. > > I tried the vinux installation on 3 systems. One is a > Gateway system from 1995 or so. It only presently has 64 megs of > RAM and that is really not enough. The speech works, but > aptitude barfs every time you try to install anything and > complains about running out of memory. Also, there were numerous > errors during the installation stating that there was no space > left on the device. I believe that is probably the virtual disk > created from available RAM of which there is far too little. > > Amazingly, the speech is fine. The remedy is to find > some more memory and try the installation again as I don't know > what all didn't get installed. > > The second system was that laptop. It has finally met > its match. The installation went smoothly and it now has 6 > virtual consoles that talk when you need them. > > Just for fun, I tried to add mplayer and mpg123. They > went right in and speechdispatcher and the other alsa services > all seem to play nicely together. You hear speakup mixed right > in with the music or whatever audio one is listening to and > neither seems to disrupt the other. > > I also tried recording with a microphone. I still may > not have amixer set right but the recordings are much better and > consistent each time. That laptop has no line input although > amixer reports a Line input. This system appears to be working > although I haven't tried a PCMCIA serial port yet. > > The third system is another oldie from around 2000 at > work. I had a terrible time formatting the hard drive for Linux > because it had had FreeBSD on it and I didn't know you can't > just format the drive with ext3 file systems. You start with a > ext2 and use makee2fs -j /PARTITIONNAME and things are much > better afterward. > > Now for the slightly bad news. When you install vinux, > you get a British keyboard. I am sure there are plenty of > British people who feel the same way when they get a US > keyboard. The British and US keyboards are mostly identical but > the differences can drive one crazy when you are used to one and > now confronted with the other. > > The shift of the number 2 gives you a double quotation > mark. The key that should send the \ gives you a number or > Pounds sign as in shift-3. The Caps-lock key does not announce > as it toggles and you soon discover that setting it involves the > normal speakup sequence of shift-capslock but clearing it > requires just a tap on the Caps-lock. Also, the Caps-lock on the > UK keyboard shifts numbers and punctuation marks as if one was > really holding down the Shift key. That's bad when you have > punctuations in a password. > > If any of you install vinux, you can temporarily get a > US keyboard by entering the following command after su'ing to > root: > > loadkeys us > > Not only do you magically get an American keyboard map, > but the Caps-lock starts announcing its status each time you > change it and it also works the way we are used to seeing it > work. > > When you get vinux installed, the way to permanently > change to a US keyboard is complicated slightly by the fact that > the instructions do not work quite right. > > You are supposed to type install-keymap us and a new > boot-time keyboard map should be copied to > /etc/console-setup/boottime.kmap.gz or something close but it > doesn't happen. I discovered after some poking around that it > installs the keymap in to /etc/console for some reason. To fix > that, you must manually copy that file to /etc/console-setup/ > and then it all works. > > I got in touch with the fellow who wrote the vinux > distribution and told him how much I appreciate the effort he > has made. As far as I am concerned, it has made a lot of > equipment that was gathering dust useful again. I can now turn > off a setup I have been using for 23 years which includes an > Echo P.C. synthesizer. It has worked well for all these years, > but it is time to modernize. > > Sorry for the length of this message, but I think vinux > adds more options to making Unix/Linux more accessible and that > is what it is all about. > > Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK > Systems Engineer > OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at braille.uwo.ca http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
