Re: [orca-list] What is a good Linux for ORCA?

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

This is a commonly asked question, below are some of my suggestions but 
I feel distribution choice is a personal one as we all want something 
different out of our computers, so in some ways the best way to choose 
one distribution is to try a few for yourself.

I personally suggest using a debian based system, either plain debian or 
GRML (although GRML may not be the best choice for those totally new to 
Linux as you are getting packages from both GRML and Debian and so may 
find cases where dependencies can't be resolved). Debian and GRML both 
seem to be not affected by some of the audio integration problems which 
plague some distributions like ubuntu.

Another Debian based distro you may want to try is the 2.0 releases of 
vinux. I know you mentioned vinux but the earlier versions were based on 
ubuntu where as the 2.0 releases (currently 2.0alpha2) are based on debian.

Another system I liked what saw for using orca was opensolaris. Now 
opensolaris is not strictly linux and so some Linux software will not 
run on it (eg. speakup for text consoles, and binary packages like 
voxin, ttsynth or any other bundle including viavoice). Also when I 
looked at it sound card was certainly more limited than Linux and so 
this may also cause a problem. Should those potential problems not 
affect you then opensolaris looked very good and is the platform where a 
significant part of orca development is done and so integration is good.

Now you seemed to indicate that you may only be doing basic text tasks, 
so the question may be raised do you really need orca, would a text 
console screen reader (eg. speakup or YASR) be enough? In this case then 
GRML may be more suited, or distros like slackware might also be of 
interest (I wouldn't recommend slackware for use with orca as gnome 
isn't part of the official distribution and so you are relying on third 
party packages of gnome and the quality of these do vary).

I haven't mentioned rpm based systems, this is mainly due to me trying 
debian and GRML and not feeling the need to look any further, so this 
should not be taken as a reflection of their quality and value for being 
considered.

As I said, try a few out, the LiveCDs for the distros may help here or 
may be you want to even try and set up a virtual machine to install some 
in to have a proper try.

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Jon Mason wrote:
> I need a good Linux dirstribution for ORCA.  I am only interested in 
> creating simple text documents and web sites with more of an emphasis 
> on text than fancy graphics.  I tried Vinux but I had problems with 
> the voice trurning off during live mode.  I also do not have the 
> brains to make Ubuntu work with ORCA.
> Is there a Linux distribution that offers ORCA without complications, 
> bugs, and other headaches?