Category: Geeks r Us
Hi all,
I need to use 10.04 with Orca in a class I'm taking. The last time I tried Ubuntu on a system infront of me as opposed to over SSH, Orca had a weird issue with audio where it would cut out and not finish what it was saying which made it unusable. I've briefly tried a live cd in a vm and I can login, but pressing alt + f2, typing orca and pressing enter doesn't give me speech; I'm not sure what's happening on screen or if this is how your meant to do it these days. Is it possible to get orca fully working without changing too many things? These will be lab machines so I'm assuming I won't be able to sudo.
If it isn't going to be practical I'll probably suggest that I access it over SSH; I'd rather do this anyway since my main TTS is Orpheus and I really don't want to program using eSpeak.
Any experiences would be great; for stuff like this I often find that it's better to ask directly since Google often finds missinformation or outdated information.
Cheers.
Honestly, I'd just ssh if i could get by with it. Orca can be mighty unstable. Some times orca does work, but I'd never use gnome for everyday tasks. Orca simply doesn't have the chopps to be a viable option for most people (definitely including me).
The more I think about it the more I'd like to SSH really. To be honest I have no idea why we're using Linux; the class (No pun intended) is based around c so there are some very viable Windows options.
I know people that use Orca as their main screen reader so perhaps it just takes a while to get used to some of it's kworks; do you know if it works at all on a stock 10.04 install? Hopefully there will be issues that will be easily understandable by a sighted person since I'm not sure if they would feel that not liking the voice is a valid reason.
Thanks for the input.
Never used ubuntu but I can tell you this someone gave it to me and it almost crashed my system. I've kind of considered that to be a really odd name for an OS anyway.
I've been using orca on some sort of Ubuntu-based system since about 9.04. In 10.04, I found it fine for working in the terminal and common desktop apps, like Libreoffice writer and calc. Orca in a stock 10.04 should be fine, though I never tried in a virtualized setup. 10.04 is the basis for the long-term supported version of Vinux (Linux for the Visually Impaired). Orca has gotten loads better since Ubuntu 10.04, especially noticible when using the Mozilla apps. Ubuntu's default UI is now something called Unity, where Orca has some trouble; many sighted Ubuntu users have issues with Unity, as well. For the best Classic Gnome experience, consider Trisquel 5.5; it's based on Ubuntu 11.10, but with the non-free bits and Unity removed.
i tried using vinux for a while on an old desktop i had laying around. Every time i go into the keyring thing where you set up a wireless network orca crashes.
I know orca's open source, so i shouldn't be too hard on it, but that particular error really pisses me off - along with the fact that it crashes at unpredictable times while using interfaces taht should be relatively easy to make accessible.
Speakup in console mode is accessible, so using linux via command line seems to be the best option for now. I love ssh, and use it most of the time for my linux needs.
Trisquel 6 should be released soon. It has Gnome 3.4.2 classic so it is like Gnome 2. There is also Sonar Gnu Linux which comes in 32 and 64 bit versions. It also has Gnome 3.4.2 using Gnome Classic. There is a version with Gnome Shell if that is your thing. I believe all versions of Sonar come with the latest 3.4x version of Orca and I think you can use Voxin with them.