Tony: On Mon, 21 Sep 2015 04:56:04 -0700, you wrote: >All, > >I've been following the Talking Arch discussion with great interest. I'm >sure what I am about to say will be rather unpopular, but I can only go by >my own experiences and what I've read. If these issues can be addressed, I >think both distributions have great potential, but as things stand now, I >can't recommend them. I'll start with Arch first. > >I had no problem downloading Arch and burning it to a CD. It fit on a CD >without difficulty, but apparently the current release doesn't. That is >most unfortunate as not everyone wants to burn a DVD for a command line >based distro. You expect it with Fedora and Ubuntu, but even Debian has >several small CD images for installation. Hopefully something can be done >to get it back to CD sized media. > >Unlike what Kyle says, I couldn't get speech upon boot. I pressed Enter at >least six times, plus other random characters. I've also encountered the >problem where speech starts after a few keys, but not in this case. I know >where the problem lies. It's because of my sound card, specifically the >emu10k1 driver. It has a weird problem with no volume by default. It isn't >muted, but the analog switch is toggled. This was fixed a long time ago in >Debian and Ubuntu, but obviously didn't make it to Arch. I reported this to >the support address and didn't get a reply for about two weeks. There was >no interest in fixing the problem, even when I offered to help. > >Similarly, due to how brltty is configured by default, it locked up my >DECtalk Express. I had to reset it by turning it off and on before it would >talk again. Again, in the same email, I reported this to support and there >was no interest in fixing it. In looking at the brltty.conf installed with >Debian testing, it looks like literally just commenting out a line would fix >this. I understand that some people still use serial Braille displays, but >USB autodetection is the default and serial devices aren't very common >nowadays, so the serial detection can probably be safely disabled. People >can still start brltty by hand or edit brltty.conf directly. > >Finally, due to its unofficial nature, it is not officially supported by the >Arch developers, so there isn't a way to file bugs in a public forum, such >... It has the same problem as Vinux (which I also don't >recommend) in that there are only two active developers working on it. If >one of them gets sick or for some reason can't keep up with the latest >releases, so much for Talking whatever. I am strongly against specialized >distributions for the blind exactly for this reason. Whatever happened to >Oralux? Both Debian and Ubuntu do have accessibility teams and the >developers take accessibility issues seriously. That being the case, I don't understand why you don't like Vinux, which is a modified Ubuntu distro. Is there a way to use Ubuntu (or Debian) and get Speakup or some other speech working so it can be installed or used accessibly without having to resort to a special distro? >much as I don't like Vinux, it does come up with a desktop which you can >try. Ubuntu is the best in this regard in my opinion as it plays a sound so >you know it actually works. Then what's the best alternative? >if the Linux community wants the blind Windows community to take Linux >seriously, there needs to be a talking GUI which just works. Unless someone >really likes DOS, they aren't going to like the command line enough to give >it a fair chance. This applies to the sighted community as well. Funny you should say that, because I'd prefer a command-line setup over a GUI any day in the week. Why? Because it's what I'm used to, way back to SCO Xenix and AT&T System V. Give me a talking CLI and I can rule my world. >What do I recommend? For people who do like the command line and have a >strong DOS background, I recommend Debian. It has a talking, menu-driven >installer. The command line is there if you want it, but it isn't required. Great. How do I start it talking after boot? > For most people, I recommend Ubuntu MATE. Same question applies. _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
