Re: root compromise on debian woody

[Charles Hallenbeck <chuckh@hhs48.com>]

Hi Kevin,
Forgive me for not ansering sooner...

On Sat, 28 May 2005, Kevin Mark wrote:

> > Chuck
> Hi Chuck,
> Any time someone mentions 'speakup', it peeks my interest to know how
> linux is advancing towards better  support for people with vision
> difficulties. Have you ever made a comparison between support in the
> OS's you have used? Do you have any articles documenting your
> experiences? I am working with a group trying to bring Free software to
> youth and while we have had supported student who speak non-english languages -- chinese, we have
> not had anyone with vision difficulties. It would be helpful to have
> someone who is using Debian comment upon this as that is what we use.
> Thanks for your time and consideration,
> Kev


Here is a not-so-current background piece:

http://www.hhs48.com/why_linux.html

You can also get more current info at www.linux-speakup.org

Many distributions now come with "speakup-modified" kernels permitting 
"eyes free" installation and operation. There are other access solutions 
besides speakup, but those require that you have a running system before 
starting the speech access solution. Speakup is a set of kernel patches 
that allows the console to talk from startup to shutdown. Once a system 
is running you can switch it to using software speech, but a hardware 
synthesizer is required normally. Speakup does not support GUI access, 
although both the gnome folks and the KDE folks are working on access 
solutions (very slowly). Speakup was developed by blind folks mostly, so 
the developers have a stake in its performance.

I have only used Slackware and Debian myself, and there is nothing in 
either distro that bears on the effectiveness of speakup. It works great 
in both. I prefer Debian for reasons unrelated to access. (as presumably 
you do, too <smile>)

Chuck


>

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