Re: [orca-list] What distro would people like me to cover in some audio walkthroughs

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello again,

Thanks to all those who have responded, it could be a few days before I 
actually start recording anything so for those not yet responded its not 
too late to suggest anything.

I think that at the moment ArchLinux is gaining the vote (I will speak 
to some of my mathematically inclined friends and see how many answers 
they can come up with by using statistics). ArchLinux certainly is 
viewed favourably by me, some of its design is so nice, order of 
checking repositories for packages but you can tell pacman use a 
particular repository if you want a specific package (eg. ArchLinux has 
a gnome-unstable repository, put this after core, extra and community, 
then if you request a gnome package it will be from the main (I guess 
stable) repositories, but you can ask pacman for gnome-unstable/orca and 
get the current 2.29.x package), the way you define daemons to run and 
modules to be loaded, etc. Only if it had a feature like OpenSolaris's 
BEs and how they are integrated, I would be very happy, but I don't 
think that will happen as it sort of goes against the ArchLinux way as 
it ties together certain components (beadm takes the snapshot and 
updates the boot loader accordingly, so depends on a certain file system 
and certain boot loader).

Also there seems to have been a number of calls for using LXDE, I must 
admit I hadn't considered it to this point, may be I should. Thinking of 
doing things different, I have recently tried out OSS4, very good, 
possibly a way forward but may be not for the audio walkthroughs, I 
really want to focus on using the system.

As for why not the talking ArchLinux CD, numerous reasons.
1. On my system it comes up talking very loud, you must log in first 
before you can turn it down. GRML you can tell it the volume on the boot 
prompt eg. my boot line looks like
grml swspeak vol=65
2. Would it be easier to use the arch CD, may be I am unqualified to say 
the answer I am going to give as I haven't done a complete install from 
it, but I would say GRML to install ArchLinux isn't hard and possibly 
more accessible. Reason, the arch installer uses menus, speakup doesn't 
work perfect with them, using GRML you use a statically linked version 
of pacman and edit text files and other basic command line things. No 
accessibility issues.
3. Extra things on GRML. GRML has some rather nice apps eg. grml-network 
for configuring your network connection, a whole bundle of sysadmin 
tools, etc for you to prepare your system, other tools like browsers, 
etc for reading documentation during the install process, etc. I just 
like GRML as a LiveCD.
4. GRML can accept any other debian packages to be installed on a 
running live system. As an example I tried installing voxin into a live 
environment of GRML, it worked fine. Also I am tempted to convert the 
pacman packages you need to use for installing ArchLinux into debian 
format and then you would just need to install those rather than the 
current, download, untar, move files to the right places, etc.

I am sure that others could think of other reasons. Also I am not saying 
that the talking ArchLinux CD isn't worth while, its sometimes good to 
have the alternatives (one clear advantage of the talking ArchLinux CD 
is its much smaller than GRML, so good for those on limited bandwidth).

Michael Whapples
On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, Steve Holmes wrote:
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> I also like or should I say vote for Arch.  Sure, I'm biessed towards
> Arch because that's the system I'm running but I also like the
> build-up nature and the concept of rolling updates.  The rolling
> updates might sound too much like Debian Unstable to some but
> surprisingly, the production Arch system proves to be quite stable.
>
> I also think you should use the Talking Arch installer as you would
> then have the necessary Arch package utilities (pacman) available to
> perform the install directly.  As for packages, yes there are packages
> a plenty and when you get a bit more familiar with how Arch works,
> there's the AUR (Arch User Repository) where you can get practically
> thousands of build scripts to create your own packages of many popular
> apps that just don't make it into the main line distro.  These
> additional packages are *NOT* necessary for a new install of Arch
> Linux with Gnome/Orca and of course, Speakup.
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