# getting tired of xp?

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 23-Oct-2006 10:49:49

Hi.

## Post 2 by frequency (the music man) on Monday, 23-Oct-2006 16:13:20

Sounds cool! Do you know if NTFS is supported?

## Post 3 by Bryan Mckinnish (Veteran Zoner) on Monday, 23-Oct-2006 18:32:54

Hmm. Sounds cool. I might look into that.
I've heard about Linux, but never tryed it.
So the operation system is ran off of a cd if you burn the file to a cd?
The only thing that stops me from doing that is the drivers. Do you have to get anything else with that file you talked about?
Bryan

## Post 4 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 23-Oct-2006 19:02:11

With the live cd yes, i have mounted my ntfs partation.

## Post 5 by buk buk buk (move over school!) on Monday, 23-Oct-2006 20:29:03

Hmmm, I will see!

## Post 6 by bharding (Generic Zoner) on Sunday, 05-Nov-2006 23:26:15

Cool! I think this sounds neat. I tried one Ubuntu CD image I downloaded somewhere, supposedly specifically made for accessibility, but never got it speaking real well. Can one get better speech engines to use with it?

## Post 7 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Monday, 06-Nov-2006 0:01:46

Which engine did you use? I think gnome-speech and emacspeak servers aqre supported with Orca? With emacspeak servers, you need to install another engine, such as Festival, Festival Lite, Dectalk LT for Linux, or Free TTS. Maybe the silence of the live cd was duee to Ubuntu Linux not being able to find your sound card? I've had this trouble with older Linux distros, and had to compile and load modules into the kernel post-install. Speakup is good for this kind of work. I haven't yet installed Orca, but plan to do so soon. Not sure whether I should use Debian or give FreeBSD a try.

## Post 8 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 06-Nov-2006 17:11:24

Hi.

## Post 9 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Monday, 06-Nov-2006 18:22:02

All distros have commandline interfaces that support speakup it's just a matter of weather those are exposed by default.

## Post 10 by bharding (Generic Zoner) on Monday, 13-Nov-2006 22:12:30

Oh, at least it's a good thing I could buy something that's not Festival for speech to use. I'm sure of the speech engines out there that Orca may be able to deal with, Dec Talk is probably the best, I'm sure.

## Post 11 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Monday, 13-Nov-2006 23:03:42

I'm still awaiting that Ubuntu live cd. I'd considered using Debian Sarge, but, have been strongly discouraged. When the Ubuntu cd arrives I'll install as directed. If I have any troubles with audio or whatever, I'll attempt a BSD installation; Orca is ported.

## Post 12 by Texas Shawn (The cute, cuddley, little furr ball) on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2006 11:11:04

hmmm, I wanted to try this on my laptop. but for some reason it won't boot from the cd. Laptop is a dell xps 1210. is there a key to hit to make it boot from cd?

## Post 13 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2006 12:56:01

That is most likely a BIOS issue. There is usually a key to hit, early in the bootstrap process, that will put you into the BIOS setup tool. Consult your computer's manual or have someone watch the boot process for the key to be identified. I know of no way to have speech or braille access to this step; you'll need help for this. You need to have the boot order set to include your cd rom device.
-Dave

## Post 14 by The Roman Battle Mask (Making great use of my Employer's time.) on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2006 13:44:47

On my Del laptop by default durring the boot process a message flashes across the screen saying hit any key to boot from cd if there is a bootable cd in there, if you don't hit the key in the proper time it goes to the hd, so I'd have someone help you once so you can see how long that weight is to hit the key.

## Post 15 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2006 23:49:07

I don't know what the engine called
Gnome-speech sounds like, but, Orca can use anything that can be driven by an emacspeak server. I once had a copy of the Dectalk RT for Linux. The 'say' application is distributed as an i-386 binary. Also, there's a little api library which ships as sources. To use Dectalk with something like Emacspeak or YASR, you first build this library. I never did get it to compile. Perhaps this was yet another issue specific to Debian Sarge?
Just an FYI,
-Dave

## Post 16 by ISeeZip (Veteran Zoner) on Friday, 17-Nov-2006 23:23:13

I like how easy this was to use. I know absolutely nothing about linux, but found this easy to use. i have two questions though.
1. How can I save preferences so that I don't have to change them each time I boot? can I save something to a flash drive or my extermal fat drive to do this?
2. Does orca work with gaim and open office? I couldn't figure out how to read text on the screen.
3. Is there a way to get the orca screen review and other keys in one concise place?
Thanks,
Shawn

## Post 17 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Saturday, 18-Nov-2006 0:41:28

In order to be able to save and load preferences, you need to install Linux and run from that. What you have is just the live and installation cd. See the Orca wiki for hits on installation and trouble shooting. Remember, do not use the install icon from Orca for doing the install; rather, run a terminal "type gnome-terminal" from the run dialogue, change to 'root' the command "sudo su", turn off Orca, etc... Turn Orca on when running as 'root', then type 'ubiquity' and begin the install as prompted. Reboot (without the cd in drive), log in with your username and password. Orca will start. Run what you like (including the Orca configuration gui), save prefs, run OO, use Gaim, etc, etc...
W E L C O M E to T H E W O N D E R O U S L I N U X W O R L D!
Your Friend Dave

## Post 18 by frequency (the music man) on Saturday, 18-Nov-2006 1:11:36

one question here. What web browser is recommended?

## Post 19 by Dave_H (the boringest guy you'll ever know) on Saturday, 18-Nov-2006 2:54:37

Firefox is part of the Ubuntu distro.