Vinux 2.0 Alpha 1 - Debian Lenny for the Visually Impaired!
Hi everyone,
I have been asked to post this announcement on this list by an existing
subscriber. I have just released the first alpha version of Vinux 2.0, which
is now based on Debian Lenny instead of Ubuntu. This decision was made to
provide a more stable and responsive system for screen-reader users.
You can download the iso and md5sum checksum from here:
http://vinux.org.uk/downloads/old/2.0/Vinux-2.0-Alpha-1.iso
http://vinux.org.uk/downloads/old/2.0/Vinux-2.0-Alpha-1.iso.md5sum.txt
There is a Development Forum/Mailing List and Blog here:
http://groups.google.com/group/vinux-development
http://vinux-development.blogspot.com/
If you have used Vinux before then you will find that this is a very basic
release which does not yet have many of the features that Vinux usually
has. It is based on Debian Lenny 5.0 and all I have done for now is to
create an Installable Live CD with Orca enabled and configured by
default using Alsa and Speech-Dispatcher. I have also made the standard
Orca SysAdmin changes so users will be able to run admin apps, but I
have not modified the menu launchers yet so you will have to launch admin
applications from the terminal by entering 'su' followed by your
password and then type the relevant command. In order to fit everything into
a CD sized image I had to remove openoffice and a few other graphics
applications.
The primary purpose of this release is for people to test the basic
screen-reading performance of Orca with Alsa and Speech-Dispatcher.
There are still many things to do and some things I tried to do but
could not get to work. The main priority at the moment is to get Orca
running and enable ethernet/wireless access, because once you have
speech and an internet connection you are then able to sort out most
issues yourself.
I have been unable to get YASR working at all, with Eflite, Festival or
Speech-Dispatcher, and festival doesn't work with Orca either so I have
removed both applications for now. I have installed Brltty and enabled
Braille in Orca but I was unable to find the usual /etc/defaults/brltty
file which starts Brltty at boot, but early reports suggest it is working.
I would therefore like feedback on both the performance and stability
of Orca and information on whether the wireless connections worked out
of the box. If so please let me know the laptop and wifi card details
if possible; and if wireless doesn't work or you manage to get it working
yourself please let me know how you got it working and I will incorporate
this into the next next alpha release. If anyone is brave enough to try
installing it then I would like feedback on the accessibility of the new
installer - remastersys-installer (text based) and remastersys-installer gui.
These should be launched from the terminal if you require speech, just type
'remastersys-installer' or 'remastersys-installer gui' after
switching to su, or type 'remastersys-installer intl' or
'remastersys-installer
intl gui' if you want to choose a language other than English. This installer
uses
cfdisk/gparted for formatting purposes so you can either use the existing
partitions or
create/modify the partitions before or during the installation process.
I look forward to your feedback!
drbongo
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