Frost writes: > They ever get speakUp working with pulse audio in unstable yet? > I know when I tried unstable, it was only two upgrades before all speech > output became FUBAR, and I had to to a scratch install of Squeeze to get > any speech back. Anyway, I'm gonna ditch Debian and give Ubuntu a try, > at least on the laptop. Is anyone out there successfully using the > latest Ubuntu release out there on the command line? I am sorry, but I am not going to be able to answer your question directly but here is what happened. I got ownership of a Dell system whose BIOS version date was May of 2004. It was originally optimized for gaming and is a very nice system with 8 USB ports and what should be a good sound system. I could get the old Vinux2 disk to come up with no problem at all and The Ubuntu live CD for version 9.10 let me start orca which did talk but would spontaneously freeze up. Ubuntu 10.10 has never made a sound. If a sighted person was using that live CD, they would not get any sound either as the problem is with pulseaudio, most likely, and the screen reader's not working is just one symptom of the overall problem of no sound. When Ubuntu 11.04 came out, I tried that ISO image and it also is dead silent. The latest version of Vinux is built around Ubuntu 11.10 and it does also not produce any sound. You can probably save yourself some wasted time by trying the latest version of Vinux first as it is built to come up talking so you can save yourself some steps. If it works, then try the Ubuntu Live cd and select the screen reader and then Orca. None of it will talk until Orca comes up so you will have a few commands to type in the blind before you find out whether it is going to work. If you get it working and install Ubuntu, the login is silent but you will get speech after a successful login. There are obviously a number of systems that do work just fine, so your mileage will definitely vary. Martin McCormick
