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

Hello,
Firstly I will say this is purely a personal effort, this means I am very limited on resources. I possibly could stretch to two different distros but I figure that for ubuntu there are possibly others better placed to do that.
Let me now lay out the placement of what level of user I am aiming at. I expect the audience to be reasonably confident computer users (not necessarily previous Linux users, but knowledge of what a hard disk is, the ability to roughly estimate the space they can allocate to Linux, know what various keys on a keyboard are and the different keymaps, etc), they should not be scared of something new when they have documentation to hand, they should be willing to learn and not expect to find a free windows clone.
What I intend to provide: Assuming the user does fall in the category above, I intend to explain what to do sufficiently so that hopefully they will understand the steps for installing, but if they don't fully understand they could follow the steps precisely and end up with a reasonable system. I would then intend to provide further guides (should be audio) for using the system for many common tasks, eg. basics of the desktop, installing and updating the system using the package manager, reading emails with thunderbird, browsing the internet with firefox, using IM software (possibly to include using skype with pidgen) and word processing with openoffice. Precisely how these guides would fit together are to be determined, desktop basics may go with installing and updating software, email and internet could be merged and there may be other things I haven't listed.
I have to admit it possibly does give a slight conflict of interests if I were to use ArchLinux, possibly people not scared by ArchLinux wouldn't need the orca guides. However I do say, those who may be scared a bit by the idea of ArchLinux, its not as bad as it might initially seem, the problem tends to be knowing what you need and what options to choose, I intend to help guide you through some of the choices with the install guide. 

Michael Whapples
PS. Tony, I did see a blog posting by you (I think the vinux blog) where you compared varius distros, its possibly what encouraged me to look at fedora. 
On 01/-10/-28163 08:59 PM, Anthony Sales wrote:

Hi Michael,

I think the decision needs to be based on the kind of audience you are aiming at. If you are aiming at 
complete newbies to Linux then Arch or Gentoo will send them running to the hills, whereas if you are aiming 
it at intermediate/advanced users then they won't want to hear about Ubuntu or Opensolaris, because the 
process is relatively simple once you know how. So my suggestion would to be to do two distros. One which 
will be accessible to newbies and one which will appeal to more advanced users. I personally would like to 
know how to get an accessible arch system up and running and have failed twice even as a sighted user. I 
particularly like the idea of a rolling release. And I understand why you wouldn't want to focus on Vinux as 
it is supposed to be fairly idiot proof. I also agree that it would be great to have a mainstream distro that 
was accessible and easy to use for newbies, but in the meantime for the technically incompetent there is 
Vinux. I have spent a lot of time looking at the mainstream distros such as Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, 
Mandriva etc and they all have a few show-stopping accessibility issues if you are a beginner, so I think 
picking one of these with the necessary fixes or workarounds would be valuable for newbies coming to Linux 
for the first time, then you could offer them a choice of a mainstream distro or a more advanced one! I look 
forward to hearing the audio walkthroughs.

drbongo




-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Michael Whapples
Sent: 02 March 2010 15:25
To: Orca-list
Subject: [orca-list] What distro would people like me to cover in some audio walkthroughs

Hello,
As my GRML install has become old I think its time for some new audio
walkthroughs from me. I have to say after some use of GRML on HD I don't
know whether I would advise it for HD installations (NOTE: GRML is an
excellent liveCD and I would recommend it for text based LiveCD work eg.
system recovery, etc). In fact look at my comments on ArchLinux for an
interesting use I may put GRML to.

This means I am now looking at what other distribution to use for the
audio walkthroughs. Has anyone any suggestions of which they would like
to be done. Below you will find some notes on what I have looked at and
views, etc, I would suggest reading that before suggesting a distro to
be covered.

I thought I had managed to reach a decision on what distribution I would
use for some orca audio walkthroughs but hit a bit of a unexpected
problem with installing fedora from the liveCD, the "first boot"
application which is certainly inaccessible with no obvious work around
(NOTE: the speakup modified fedora won't do, I will be installing it on
a system already with windows XP on the disk and the text installer
would clear the whole disk).

An alternative I had been considering is OpenSolaris, regardless of my
view of oracle there currently is a technical show stopper for me with
it as on the computer I intend to use X won't start on the latest
development builds (I suspect its the intel graphics issues which were
introduced around b130). I believe they intend to fix the issue with
intel graphics by the release, however that's getting quite close. If it
can be fixed by the release then it is back in the list of choices.

Another one I have given serious consideration is ArchLinux. This takes
a very different approach to the others I am considering, although it
probably fits better with my personal views, build up the system the way
you want rather than rip apart a large default system and fight it to
work the way you want. While I like build it up approaches, I am
concerned whether it works for a audio walkthrough as the system can
have so many possible configurations. My other concern is how well
supported ArchLinux is, by this I mean third party software (an example
would be skype don't make a package for it, but this skype example
doesn't work fully as there are skype packages in the community
repository). Actually that skype example probably demonstrates that my
concern may not be real, there seems to be enough software in the
repositories for most (if not all) general desktop usage.

To install ArchLinux I probably will do an install using the GRML
LiveCD, yes its possible, reason why, its a more full system to be
working with while installing (eg. nice handy applications like
grml-network to configure your network, etc).

Now for the distros I ruled out fairly early on:
* OpenSuse: They seem to go their own way for things with no clear
reason (eg. SBL instead of brltty (SBL lacks for me as it doesn't seem
to support USB Braille displays whereas brltty has had support for USB
for years), gnome's menus (why do they make that odd menu/application to
replace the standard gnome ones, it just makes it unfamiliar), etc).
* Debian: I am saying this a bit reluctantly, but essentially the
problem seems to be stable too old, testing and unstable too unreliable
for the step by step nature of an audio walkthrough.
* Ubuntu: Just don't like it, too many reasons really to list.
* Slackware: While installation can be done with speakup, there is no
software speech option for install and I don't have the resources to
provide an espeakup enabled slackware install CD. Also possible issues
with installing gnome as you need a third party gnome distribution but
this is minor compared to the install issue.
* Gentoo: While a nice idea the compile from source thing gets to you
after a time, too slow to install/upgrade packages for little gain in
running the system.
* Vinux: Don't really believe in the idea of specially developed
systems, I am sure that accessibility can be well integrated into
mainstream distros (OpenSolaris is an example where it has been done
well). I believe the route of educating on accessibility is better in
the long term, if distros don't know about the accessibility concerns
they may do something which makes your adapting task much harder in the
future without even realising the impact of their decision.

OK, enough from me, now for your suggestions.

Michael Whapples
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