Category: Geeks r Us
A new podcast on GNU/Linux, free software, and accessibility has begun; episode 1, recorded on Tuesday, 30-October, is posted!
here is the mp3 feed
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sonarradiomp3
Here is the ogg feed
http://feeds.feedburner.com/sonarradioogg
Here are the show notes
http://www.sonar-project.org/notes
This is an awesome podcast, which, if you look at it, goes in the Going Linux format. Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks for your kind words! Going Linux is our model, though, with focus on the accessibility-user perspective.
The format is especially good. I think that your podcast will carry many good things down the road.
I'll review our other topic before recording next show; may be useful q&a there. Also, this week, I'm attending a local GNU/Linux Desktop Users' meetup, where the topic is "what is your favorite distro". Trisquel represent, already, by a FSF board member.
Hi Dave. I really enjoyed the podcast, and have checked out the sonar page. Could you tell me a bit about sonar? As in, what are the differences between the stock ubuntu distro and sonar? I couldn't find anything on the page about differences between the two distros. I look forward to listening to more of you guys. You're doing some great work. I'm trying to implement linux more and more into my every day computing, as I 100 percent believe in the free software model. I've had a good deal of experience with both vinux and ubuntu so far. I'm going to install sonar on an old box this week end and see how I like that as well.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the kind words, and I'll pass them onto Jonathan and Kyle, my co-hosts.
Sonar is a respin of Ubuntu 12.04, but with the Unity desktop, and some non-free Ubuntu add-ons removed. Also, I think Sonar is still being distributed in GNOME Shell and GNOME Classic flavors, with a super-lean, super-fast LXDE option available soon! One can take a stock Ubuntu and, essentially, turn it into Sonar, on her own, with not a lot of trouble; I've done this.
Jonathan and I feel that Unity is a needless r"reinvention of the wheel", and Canonical seems to have decided to abandon the version of Unity that ships with 12.10, in favor of one, they admit, has limited accessibility, and will have, by design, until the next LTS. No other GNU/Linux distributor seems to have adopted Unity, though it is licensed under the GPL, and available as an after-thought. Since Unity 2D is the default on the stock 12.04 Ubuntu, and this is designated a "long-term stable" release (it will be supported for 5 years), I decided to cover U 2D in the accessiblefreedom wiki, over Jonathan's objection.
very cool. well I look forward to playing with it, as I tried to install 12.1 on my desktop with mixed results.
Looking forward to the next cast
Hello. Do most laptops come with a writer these days, or do I need to get a burner? And will the CD boot if I restart the computer automatically? What kind of CD is needed? I've two candidates. One CD has two wavs (which can be formatted most easily), and the other is a Windows ME install disk? Which candidate wins the honor, in theory?
Rockstar, did you mean Ubuntu 12.10? 12.04 would be a better installation candidate.
Bass Player: An ordinary blank dvd will work. Whether you can boot directly from your cd/dvd depends on a bios setting. You may be fine, already; if not, you may have to have someone bang a key during a short time window after power-on, to give access to a menu of options, including boot device order. Finally, there may be a key you can bang, at power-on, that puts you into a device menu, where you can just down-arrow to your dvd drive and hit 'enter'. For instance, on my Asus 1015PE, I hit 'escape' a bunch times, starting about a quarter-second after power-on, and end up in the boot menu. On my Dell Inspiron, the special key is 'f12'. Note: On the Asus, I had to have someone disable the boot booster (tm), before I could boot from anything other than the hard drive. If there's nothing in the usb ports, the machine just goes to the hd.
HTH,
Dave H.
Is there a location on the machine, particularly in the help file, that gives information on the Bios. I think the CD boots up, because when I stick an audio CD in, the drive spins up. Does that sound correct, or does the drive spin up anyways, CD or none, naturally?
The drive might spin up, anyway, but you wouldn't notice this when nothing is in it. There wouldn't be a manual on the Sonar page for this, it differs by machine. You may have to google for instructions for booting your machine from dvd. You could just try it with a dvd known to be a bootable live cd, and see what happens? If it happens to boot, then we're done, and you can proceed to run Sonar, Trisquel I18N, whatever.
I presume that voice will be present from the get go. And how is Windows gotten back into?
If you download and boot Sonar or Trisquel I18N, voice will come up at start. If using the stock Ubuntu, you can get an accessible session by typing 'ctrl+s' when you hear a beat on the bongo drums; this is the login prompt. In the case of stock Ubuntu, you can choose "try ubuntu", after Orca starts and you 'alt+tab' into the dialogue. This will give you the live session where you can mess around, without effecting your computer's hard drive. In the affore-mentioned Trisquel or Sonar, you come straight into the talking live session. When you're done, and want to return to Win, shutdown or restart your system, ejecting the live cd as the thing powers down. Since you haven't yet changed anything, you're fine.
Cool. I plan do jump into the Linux Lake any day now, provided I can talk my mom into it. I think, the way her computer works, she should use it too. Her Windows is slow!
Yes, she should! You take care of the g33ky parts; she'll be able to just use it. You can even give her an account where Orca doesn't start. She can play with the desktop, wall papers, background, screen saver, etc, all she wants.
Neat! So, now we've gotten it running (not really, just hypothetically), and we've installed the distro, and we're having a great time. But, we need to get back into Windows, how is it done?
If you did the installation of the distro beside Windows, it's as easy as rebooting, but choosing Windows at the boot menu. Maybe just a press of 'down' once. If you gave the entire disk to GNU/Linux, you'd have to redo the installs of both systems or put Win in a virtual box, with Linux as host os, or put Linux into a virtual box, with Windows as host. Linux distros like Ubuntu, Opensuse, Sonar, and Trisquel make side-by-side installations easy.