Yes, XFCE will work without Pulseaudio installed. However, I have had rather serious problems with speech-dispatcher dying as soon as Orca starts when configured to speak using ALSA. Installing Pulseaudio seems to actually help this, but it causes Espeak to chop the end off some words and completely miss some letters on older systems, and of course, Pulseaudio will completely stop Speakup from speaking until or unless it is suspended. I haven't yet found the perfect solution for running speech-dispatcher+Espeak+Orca on older systems and also running Speakup on the same system. Furthermore, while XFCE itself is indeed minimally accessible, I find that if you only use the graphical environment minimally, i.e. to run Firefox, XFCE will most likely meet your needs without causing any major slowdowns, even on old hardware. ~Kyle http://kyle.tk/ -- "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?" Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
