Re: State of Orca in Testing
Shérab <Sebastien.Hinderer@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>
> Which distributions do you have in mind which could be good candidates
> as far as accessibility and keeping up-to-date with upstram is
> concerned?
It's probably not polite to mention those distributions on a Debian list, so
let me first mention some of the greatest features of Debian:
1. It's built by and for the community, and, as I said earlier, the
accessibility group consists of highly capable developers who devote
extraordinary effort to their work.
2. Debian Policy: you are assured that every package in the archive is built
according to a consistent, and high, standard. this doesn't guarantee that the
software is good, of course, but only that it's packaged properly and that it
interacts appropriately with the rest of the system.
3. debian Free Software Guidelines: legally, you know where you stand when you
download a package from the main archive, and when you obtain a package from
non-free, you know that you ought to read the licence.
There are many other qualities that make Debian great, but I think the above
distinguish it from most other distributions.
I suppose my main alternatives would be Arch Linux, or possibly Fedora. Ubuntu
has the advantage of being a Debian derivative, but it's increasingly moving
in its own direction (Upstart, Unity desktop, Mir display server, and so on).
Much of the community is embracing GNOME, Systemd and Wayland instead, and I
would prefer to use software that is backed by multiple, widely used
distributions rather than by one. As to desktop environments, GNOME is the
project that much of the accessibility-related development is coming from and
which holds the greatest resources and expertise, so there are pragmatic
reasons to install GNOME rather than any of the alternatives and to keep close
to GNOME upstream.
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