That is why when you are just starting out on the console, and you know how to set up speak up, the keyboard shortcuts for that only require you to hold down the caps lock key by default, when ever I do an install I always turn the volume up with caps lock and 2 to turn up the volume, but as a rule of thumb, I generally don’t need to use it as the terminal gets all the work I need done, a simple sudo aptitude update and sudo aptitude upgrade if needed if I check for updates which I do regularly
> On 31 Dec 2021, at 03:14, Jeffery Mewtamer <mewtamer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Even with console applications, there are various toolkits that allow
> for the creation of pseudo-GUIs and many such applications do have a
> number of keyboard commands, though they don't always adhere to the
> conventions shared by most GUI applications(e.g. in the Nano text
> editor, save is ctrl+o, not ctrl+s, cut and paste are ctrl+k and
> ctrl+u instead of ctrl+x and ctrl+v, and find is ctrl+w instead of
> ctrl+f)
>
> Most such text-only GUIs are built on ncurses, and there are packages
> like dialog that allow shell scripts to to display dialog boxes and
> scrollable menus.
>
> I also think it worth noting that, on most distros, there isn't just
> one console, but several and that you can easily switch between them
> with just a couple of key presses.
>
> As a general rule, each console is reference by the abbreviation tty
> followed by a number and if you're in one console, you switch to a
> different one by pressing alt+ the function key corresponding to the
> number of the console you want. The number varies from distro to
> distro, but 12 is common, one for each function key on a standard
> keyboard, though I understand setups with 24 and a distinction made
> between left alt and right alt when switching aren't uncommon. If
> you're running an Xserver, it takes up one of the consoles, and if
> you're in the GUI, you typically need to do trl+alt+fn to break out of
> the GUI and into the text consoles. If you start x manually, the
> xserver will be on whichever console you were on when you invoked
> startx, but if your system boots into the desktop automatically, which
> console is used for the GUI varies from distro to distro, though I
> believe tty1 and tty6 or tty7 are the most common.
>
> I usually have a stripped down Xserver running Firefox+Orca on tty1
> and use tty2+ for everything else... at the moment, I have:
>
> Firefox+Orca running on tty1
> aumix(a audio mixer) opened in tty2
> A text file open in nano on tty3
> tty4 at the command prompt in the directory where the text file that's
> open in tty3 is located, for easily running wc to get word count of
> the file without having to close and reopen my editor or if I need to
> pull up a different file to reference something.
> tty5 is open to the directory where Firefox dumps all of my downloads.
>
> and from Firefox, I just use ctrl+alt+F2-F5 to jump to aumix, the open
> text file, the directory where the file is saved, or my downloads
> directory, and can switch between any of those text consoles with just
> alt+a function key.
>
> And while I haven't use them, there are utilities like screen and some
> others to facilitate multi-tasking in a single console.
>
> And if things are properly configured, switching between the console
> running X and one of the text consoles should seamlessly switch
> between Orca and your console screen reader, though this can sometimes
> be tricky to get working right.
>