# Ubuntu, gnome, Orca and some help please

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 22-Nov-2007 9:47:29

good day to all. I have tried the latest live cd of ubuntu with orca and it's quite amazing because it works just as the instructions say it should. Now, I need to find someone who uses Orca and could perhaps guide me through some things. Example, I tried using firefox and noticed that the regular arrow keys did nothing to read the page. I have no doubt I am missing something here. So, if there are any kind souls using orca and would care to share your knowledge I would be greatful. either send me a private message or drop a note in this topic and I will contact you. I do have skype as well. As an assistive tech instructor I am always looking for newer cheeper ways to provide clients with what they need. If this even has a remote posibillity of working it's quite a find. Festival is not bad at all and it seems like Gnome works somewhat like windows with the alt key activating the applications menu bar. What I am really excited about is that finally, this is a distribution that has come down to the level of the consumer and can be activated by anyone. Thanks for the help.

## Post 2 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Thursday, 22-Nov-2007 20:12:45

the key to your success is f6.

## Post 3 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Thursday, 22-Nov-2007 20:13:21

the key to your success is f6.

## Post 4 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Friday, 23-Nov-2007 6:08:06

Its been a while since I've used Ubuntu with Firefox, but from what I remember, Firefox 2 isn't really orca friendly without having to first install Firevox. To use Orca with Firefox, you'll have to get the latest version of Orca and compile it from source, same for firefox which at this time is 3.0 Beta 1.. A helpful url for this is: http:// live.gnome.org / Orca / DownloadInstall

## Post 5 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Friday, 23-Nov-2007 9:42:07

er yeah or just press f6

## Post 6 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Saturday, 24-Nov-2007 20:46:44

Really likeing the f6 suggestion and will try that. any other tips regarding using open office or anything are definately welcome.

## Post 7 by CallMeAl (Veteran Zoner) on Saturday, 08-Dec-2007 11:58:44

Actually, although the f6 thing does work to some extent under firefox 2, You'll still want to use firefox 3 and latest Orca for significantly better functionality. Basically the difference is that in Firefox 2, pressing f6 turns on Firefox's Caret browsing mode, which sort of works, but is broken and limited in a lot of ways. With firefox3 and Latest Orca, Orca is handling the caret navigation instead of Firefox, so you get functionality like table navigation, the ability to move through a page by header, a command to jump to the first form field on the page, etc, etc. So, if you want to judge where Orca and Firefox are in terms of accessible web browsing, it should really be done with the latest stuff. The only problem is in order to do so effectively, you really need to install the OS rather than using the live cd, because the live cd only ships with released versions of programs.
--Al

## Post 8 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Tuesday, 11-Dec-2007 8:07:52

Al, I thought that you could install from the live cd. don't they keep that updated? where would you recommend I find the latest installation. If I did install from the live CD could I run an automatic update and would it do the same thing and update to the latest version of orca and ubuntu as well as firefox? really learning here. thanks.

## Post 9 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Tuesday, 11-Dec-2007 18:12:34

You can install ubuntu with firefox and orca just fine, you've got to compile the latest versions from source, no other way.

## Post 10 by CallMeAl (Veteran Zoner) on Tuesday, 11-Dec-2007 20:26:41

Basically, the deal is that there are released versions of programs, and then, there are bleeding edge development versions. The current stable release of Ubuntu is Gutsy. If you install Gutsy,all the packages you will get will be the ones that were considered stable at the time the OS was released. For example, take Firefox. Gutsy ships with Firefox 2. If you update Gutsy via apt-get, you will get bug fix updates to Firefox 2, but you won't get Firefox 3 unless you decide to compile it by hand. The next release of Ubuntu is code named Hardy. Hopefully, Firefox 3 will have progressed enough by the time Hardy is released to ship as part of the OS.
--Al

## Post 11 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Tuesday, 11-Dec-2007 22:31:53

where do they come up with these names? Wow, al thanks for the info. I'll look out for that one. excellent.

## Post 12 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Saturday, 15-Dec-2007 19:40:48

Someone could well jump in here that has more knolige about this, but here goes.
As I understand it, ubuntu 7.04/010 does not hav built in support for writing to ntfs file systems, which is probably the file system that windows is installed on.
Because of this, unless you have unpartitioned space on your harddrive, ubuntu will be unable to resize the partition, giving it no ware to put windows.
Even if you install ubuntu first and then put xp on, xp won't see the linux partition - it only sees one big unpartitioned space and will there for format your ubuntu and dominate your harddrive.
The one solution that in thirey of the top of my head would work would be to install windows xp on ntfs and then repartition your harddrive so that you have one small xp drive in ntfs, one small ubuntu drive in fat32 and a universal drive composed of the rest of your harddrive as fat32.
This is because both ubuntu and windows support writing to fat32.
Or you could get wubi but the last time I Tryed that on a computer ubuntu didn't work, but that could well have been my fault, as wubi was ultering partitions whilst windows was defragmenting whilst I wasn't overly focused - that magic orange juice again lol.
Give it a go anyway, you won't do anything that can't be reversed.
BEN.

## Post 13 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Sunday, 16-Dec-2007 0:28:47

You're correct, Ben, in Ubuntu 7.04, there was no ntfs write or read support, in 7.10, there should be, using ntfs3g, I think is the driver's name, make sure before you go screwing with your partitions, that you make an image of your Windows setup with Ghost, or True Image, in case something goes very, very wrong, you could restore it, off of an external hard drive, hth.

## Post 14 by WillieTheWoof (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Monday, 17-Dec-2007 20:07:48

Zoix! this is good to know! thanks...

## Post 15 by 404 to the 508 (Generic Zoner) on Wednesday, 19-Dec-2007 16:51:23

Hello. I don't recommend using the NTFS drivers that come with Linux. NTFS is made for Windows, and Windows has good support for it (of course), but that isn't the same for Linux. It doesn't implement it very well and if you use NTFS in write mode, it can sometimes corrupt drives. Maybe Ubuntu's driver will handle it better, but I'd be a little weery about using for important stuff before waiting for input from other people. If you want to share files between Windows and Ubuntu, either do what B3N said and install Ubuntu on a little partition formatted with ext2fs, another small partition formatted with NTFS for Windows, and the rest of your hard drive with fat32 (for your files). If you do it that way, you can boot into Ubuntu or Windows. You can also run VMWare under Windo
ws and tell it to boot from the Ubuntu partition (So you can run them simultaneously). I will say however that VMWare is not free, but if you have a copy, can get a copy, or are willing to buy a copy, it is a great program. The VMWare I'm speaking of is VMWare Workstation.
If you like the VMWare idea but don't want to repartition your drive, you can install VMWare and make a virtual drive. I'm running Arch Linux from a VMWare Virtual Drive. Of course, you can't boot into that, but if you're just looking to play with Ubuntu, it is a great way to do so on top of Windows.
Also, another way to exchange files from Ubuntu to Windows is Samba. If you can get Samba up and running, it works just like a Windows file share and you can either put the share on the Ubuntu side and mount it from Windows, or you can put the share on the Windows side and mount it from Ubuntu. I use Samba all the time over here. I mount the Linux share from Windows because if the Windows computer goes down and you lose your share, Linux doesn't do well with it and you have amount point that you can't use, and you can't unmount it until you reboot. Windows is a little better with that.

## Post 16 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Thursday, 20-Dec-2007 8:53:49

firefox v2.x is n accessible. ,instead, firefox grandparidiso is the testing version of ff 3. This is the first thing you need to get. once this 1is installed pressing f7 will enable carot browsing. Also make sure orca is controlling the carot, not geco. You c verify this by pressing insert f12. It isn't quite as fast as some might like it but it is getting better each day. You can also grab the latest build of firefox from trunk. also check out http://live.gnome.org/Orca/Firefox please get me on skype cdog2005 if you need more information. I c assist you with anything you need. I've be5 using orca since it was in early testing.