Slackware also offers either small cd's or a dvd.
On Fri, 2 Oct 2015, Steve Matzura wrote:
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 07:23:10
From: Steve Matzura <sm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
<speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. <speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Why I can't recommend Arch or Gentoo
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.
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