re: Introducint myself to list members

re: Introducint myself to list members

[aerospace1028]

greetings Ahmed
I'm new to linux myself, but I'll try and point you to some places that might be of interest.  I'm not sure if anyone has replied to you off-list, so I'll try to start at the beginning.  

First, there are many distributions of linux available.  Some of the most common include; Open Solaris (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/), Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/), Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), and Open SuSE (http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org).  

As far as I know, all of these distributions that I have listed use what is called the "gnome desktop."  The gnome desktop is just a graphic desktop environment--sort of analogus to the Windows desktop.  Gnome includes it's own screen-reader called "orca" (http://live.gnome.org/Orca).  In my opinion, orca is highly functional and makes gnome-based linux distrobutions quite accessible.  At this point in time, you will want to avoid any distribution that uses "KDE" instead of gnome.  KDE is an alternate graphical desktop environment that is not yet compatible fully with AT-SPI (the linux accessibility protocol).

I'm new to speakup myself (I'm looking through the process to install speakup on my own machine), but from what i have found out, in most cases, you will need to install it after you get your specific linux distribution up and running.  There is one exception: it is possible to obtain Fedora with speakup pre-compiled (http://speakupmodified.org/).

You might want to check out Darragh's site (http://www.digitaldarragh.com/linux/showpage.asp?section=linux&category=accessibility&title=Linux%20Accessibility); he has made several audio tutorials concerning linux accessibility.  In particular, you can listen to a walk-through for installing Ubuntu and Open SuSE and get a handle on the process before doing it yourself.

One more thing to consider, I'm not sure about internationally but within the United States among universities Solaris is popular.  I use Ubuntu myself, but if you are going to be working with institutions that are running one version of Solaris or another, using Open Solaris might make transitioning your work from your personal machine to a university network more seamless.

I hope this is not over-whelming and helps get you started:-)
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Re: Introducint myself to list members

[Gregory Nowak]

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On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 03:50:11PM -0500, aerospace1028@hotmail.com wrote:
> First, there are many distributions of linux available.  Some of the most common include; Open Solaris (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/), Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/), Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/), and Open SuSE (http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org).  

A couple more are slackware http://www.slackware.com, and debian
http://www.debian.org.
As far as I know, open Solaris isn't based on linux. The name suggests
that it is an open variant of Sun's os, which is in the unix family,
and not in the linux family. I'll admit I don't know much about Sunos,
so I do stand to be corrected. What this means to you, is that you
will not be able to use speakup under open solaris.

> 
> As far as I know, all of these distributions that I have listed use what is called the "gnome desktop."  The gnome desktop is just a graphic desktop environment--sort of analogus to the Windows desktop.  Gnome includes it's own screen-reader called "orca" (http://live.gnome.org/Orca).  In my opinion, orca is highly functional and makes gnome-based linux distrobutions quite accessible.  At this point in time, you will want to avoid any distribution that uses "KDE" instead of gnome.  KDE is an alternate graphical desktop environment that is not yet compatible fully with AT-SPI (the linux accessibility protocol).

Note that slackware doesn't come with gnome. So, if you want to use
gnome, and don't want to have to install it separately, slackware is
probably not for you.

> 
> I'm new to speakup myself (I'm looking through the process to install speakup on my own machine), but from what i have found out, in most cases, you will need to install it after you get your specific linux distribution up and running.  There is one exception: it is possible to obtain Fedora with speakup pre-compiled (http://speakupmodified.org/).

This is not strictly correct, Slackware was the first distribution to
include speakup in the official install media, and it still does, as
far as I know. From what I've read on this list, it looks like debian
lenny will include speakup in the official netinst iso image. Also, as
far as I remember, ubuntu used to come with speakup, but doesn't
anymore, as far as I know.

Greg

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re: Introducint myself to list members

[luke]

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, aerospace1028@hotmail.com wrote:

> You might want to check out Darragh's site 
> (http://www.digitaldarragh.com/linux/showpage.asp?section=linux&category=accessibility&title=Linux%20Accessibility); 
> he has made several audio tutorials concerning linux accessibility.  In 
> particular, you can listen to a walk-through for installing Ubuntu and 
> Open SuSE and get a handle on the process before doing it yourself.

Be aware, that his Ubuntu Intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10) install with Orca, 
currently does not apply.  He did it with a pre-release version which 
actually worked, but as of a few days ago, the actual release version of 
intrepid does not seem to have a talking install capability, although the 
live CD does talk.

Luke

Introducint myself to list members.

[Ahmed Khater]

Hello listers,

My name is Ahmed Khater.  I am an Egyptian blind scholar and a university of English language, linguistics and translation.  I am 
claimed to be a fairly good computer user of Windows / jaws and many other windows-based applications.

However, After I registered for my ph.d in computational linguistics with specific reference to Arabic, I discovered that I need 
to learn and use Linux as many computational linguists use this platform to create, modify and control language databases of 
words, morphemes, phonemes and much more.  So, I decided to enter this new world and learn Linux.

My first question, where can I download the full package of Linux.  I know that this is a difficult question to answer, since 
Linux is created to satisfy a multitude of needs and to work on a multiplicity of computer machines with various purposes in mind. 
But, I need it on my intel-based machine in order to work with language databases.  So, I need to download a standard Linux 
package.

Thank you for any suggestion to me on the place where I could download this package and I am sorry to bother you with further 
questions in my following e-mails while I am learning this new OS.

Best Regards

Ahmed Khater
aakhater@gmail.com
It's always hope that gives meaning to life