Re: Suggestions Box!

[drbongo]

Here is a list of new features I hope to be able to incorporate in the
first release under the new Vinux name: The Username and Password
entered during the install process will be retained, the USB Creator
application will work with the customised live CD by default, the YASR
console screen-reader will be installed allowing users to run without
a GUI, the LinuxSpeaks complete audio desktop will be available and a
whole host of accessible console based applications including lynx,
urlview, joe, mc, oleo, mutt, vlock, partimage, alpine, irssi, mpg123
etc...

I am also trying to configure Speech-Dispatcher with Alsa, Emacspeak,
the Linux Screen Reader, Speakup, Screader, Festival and as many other
accessibility applications as I can find, but unfortunately I have not
been able to get these working satisfactorily yet with Intrepid!

The cost of including these extra accessibility packages is that I
have to exclude some standard packages in order to fit them on the CD.
I have already stripped Ubuntu down about as far as I can without
causing any significant problems, but Open Office is now the only
thing left I can safely remove! So the choice is this - do I remove
everything I can and provide a bare bones system with all of the
accessibility packages ( I suppose I could include a script to
reinstall everything I have removed once installed) or do I leave
Ubuntu as it is and just add on all of the accessibility applications
creating a large iso (possibly up to 1.4Gb) that would have to be
burned onto a DVD. This is a problem I am still wrestling with, I may
well end up making two different versions one for CD and one for DVD!

I would appreciate people's thoughts on this matter, or suggestions
for packages (especially command line applications) that I might have
over-looked!

drbongo

[Nimer Jaber]

Hello,
First, a script that installs the main apps such as office would be
good, as long as accessibility works out of the box. You could also make
an iso for DVD's, but there are a lot of people who can not burn DVD's.
Second, is there any way to import the work already completed for 8.10
to 8.04? For some reason, I am unable to get printing to work in vinux
currently.
Third, is there any way to possibly get vinux running on a suse
platform? The reason I ask is that suse has an accessible boot menu, and
it would compliment accessibility in the OS.

Thanks
Nimer J

[Pete]

accessibility out of the box is the great (and unique) feature Vinux
offers, especially for novice users who may not be experienced in
configuring appications within Linux.

To give up the mainstream appications such as Open Office, however,
and require the same novice user to configure these applications does
not seem like a good thing if it can be avoided.

Realizing the space limitations and assuming that a CD image is much
more preferable than a DVD image (for many of the reasons you
suggest), I think that your idea of supplying configuration scripts to
install these applications is a great idea.

This reminds me of the low-end PC which Wal Mart sold several years
ago. They got the cost way down by configuring a low-end system with
Linux. The computer didn't come with all of the standard apps
installed. However, knowing that many of their customers wouldn't be
able to install these programs, there (apparently) was a list of
programs which the user could optionally install. I believe that all
the user had to do was to click on or select the application to be
automatically downloaded and installed.

I think a similar thing could be done here. Make a desktop item
labled something like "additional applications and downloads". Within
this item would be a list of programs (such as Open Office) that the
user could install by simply selecting some programs and hitting "OK"
to download and install.

That would make a nice clean system, easy to use, full of
functionalilty, and customizable to the user's preferences.

Also, perhaps a descriptive note summarizing what each application is
would be useful. Being new to Ubuntu, I can tell you that some of
these names don't mean anything to me and would require some Googling
for me to figure out!

Anyway, thanks, and keep up the good work.

-- Pete

[drbongo]

Nimer, in principle should be able to convert any gnome based distro
such as fedora or suse into a vinux style system. However while it is
relatively straight-forward to make it accessible it is not as easy to
remaster as Ubuntu unless things have changed significantly last time
I checked. I think Fedora used Revisor and Suse might have had a
tool called Kiwi, but these only allowed to to create a new live CD
from scratch not from an installed working system. The other distros
which allow you to do this are DSL, Puppy and PCLInuxOS, none of which
use Gnome by default. So for now we are pretty much stuck with ubuntun
and remastersys, which I think is pretty good as it is! drbongo

[David Knight]

I would consider the inclusion of openoffice (or at least the word processing element) essential in a modern distribution. The lightweight Abiword would of course be an alternative but I am not sure how the accessibility features compare to openoffice.

I personally find bulky DVD downloads frustrating, and putting a 1.4Gb file on a DVD just seems wrong to me somehow. How about an image file for USB?

[David Knight]

drbongo wrote:

Nimer, in principle should be able to convert any gnome based distro
such as fedora or suse into a vinux style system.  However while it is
relatively straight-forward to make it accessible it is not as easy to
remaster as Ubuntu unless things have changed significantly last time
I checked. I think  Fedora used Revisor  and Suse might have had a
tool called Kiwi, but these only allowed to to create a new live CD
from scratch not from an installed working system. The other distros
which allow you to do this are DSL, Puppy and PCLInuxOS, none of which
use Gnome by default. So for now we are pretty much stuck with ubuntun
and remastersys, which I think is pretty good as it is! drbongo
  

For anyone interested in this you can use the mklivecd script to create a cloop image of a system. I believe the script is compatible in theory with any Debian derived distribution. I remember when I checked it out last year it was compatible with PClinuxOS and Morphix, the modularised Knoppix distro.

[Anthony Sales]

David, I agree that a CD sized iso is preferable, and a word-processing
application is essential, Abiword is not accessible, but the 400Mb taken up
by open-office just for a word-processor is excessive to say the least. It is
a very fine balance between functionality and accessibility. Options include
a full Ubuntu with a few accessibility apps, a bare bones ubuntu with plenty
of accessibility apps (and an installer script for the missing apps), or a
DVD edition with everything on. If I had to choose I would probably opt for
the the second option, but ultimately I may have to make more then one
version: a standard CD edition with basic accessibility, and a DVD edition
with pretty much everything I think would be useful. drbongo

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[David Knight]

Nimer Jaber wrote:

Third, is there any way to possibly get vinux running on a suse 
platform? The reason I ask is that suse has an accessible boot menu, and 
it would compliment accessibility in the OS.
  

Kiwi was used to create the KDE 4 live CDs with openSuse and may be what you're looking for.

 http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/KIWI

[David Knight]

Suggestion: Better voices script.

It occurs to me that everyone has their particular voice they prefer.
What about a script that will allow you to choose the range of freely
available voices in a specified language, perhaps allow you to listen
to a sample of that speech and will automatically install them for
you. With the limited capacity of a CD you'd never fit the vast range
of voices available on it and most would be redundant.

I seem to remember that there are some problems with the license on
the CMU and Mbrola voices though ie they are not GPL but I may be
wrong here...

[Amy Mason]

I have to second this suggestion. It's very difficult for me, coming from windows, to work with the default speech in Ubuntu. Honestly, it makes my ears ache *grin*. That was something I never did figure out how to do in my past attempts to install Ubuntu and other distros. Thank you for all your work on this.

Amy

[Labrador]

Hi Amy,

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 08:12:14AM -0600, Amy Mason wrote:
> I have to second this suggestion. It's very difficult for me, coming from
> windows, to work with the default speech in Ubuntu. Honestly, it makes my
> ears ache *grin*.

Regarding speech, you have to know that:
- espeak is not only free under the gpl general public license, it's also
multilingual,
- there exist the ttsynth / voxin solution, that's in fact a repackaging (a
remaster) of the so called IBMTTS, know by lots of blind persons as Eloquence
under Win$
That package may not be provided with a distro, but you may add it if you
buy it!
- another non-free but gratis solution is the Mbrola voice; that may also be
downloaded and installed by the user, for free, its also multilingual but
doesn't use one TTS like Festival or Espeak do, and btw its not GPL so it
will never be distributed ready-to-go except if you have authorization, but
then your distro may not longer be called Gnu/Linux but Linux.

That's what I need to say regarding speech and Gnu/Linux.

Grtnx,

Labrad0r

[Tj]

I, too, hate festivle and Espeak. I don't have the 40 bucks to dish out for
elloquence, either. Anyone know of some halfway decent voices that I can
get that are free? I use ubuntu 8.10/Vinux1.2 (My own style of it at
anyrate), so i don't have to pay for things!

Lol,

Tj

----- Original Message -----
From: "Labrador" <labr...@edpnet.be>
To: <vinux-de...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 7:29 AM
Subject: [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!


>

[Anthony Sales]

David and Amy,

 

I will try to include as many speech engines and voices as I can get to work (without using any propriatory software). I will certainly install festival, flite, eflite, YASR, Linux Speaks, Speech-Dispatcher (but not enabled yet) etc to give people the widest possible choice of voices, but there are of course limitations on space on the cd.

 

drbongo

---

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Amy Mason
Sent: 26 January 2009 14:12
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!

[David Knight]

The other free (but not necessarily GPL) voices I am aware of are the CMU_arctic, Mbrola and NitechHTS. The Nitech voices sound particularly appealing as the download is only about 10meg yet the voice is apparently pretty good and the license is openBSD which is compatible with GPL (free as in beer..without the hangover). The machine I'm on at the moment hasn't got any speakers so I can't compare but according to the Ubuntu Howto (link below) it's similar to the far bulkier CMU_arctic voices (approx 100meg).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=751169

The link above explains how to install all of these voices yourself. I can't see why these instructions wouldn't work with Vinux as well as Ubuntu.

[David Knight]

Anthony Sales wrote:

I will try to include as many speech engines and voices as I can get to work (without using any propriatory software). I will certainly install festival, flite, eflite, YASR, Linux Speaks, Speech-Dispatcher (but not enabled yet) etc to give people the widest possible choice of voices, but there are of course limitations on space on the cd.

That's the problem, you can't possibly fit all of these voices on a CD and most of them aren't required. A script would also avoid any GPL issues as you wouldn't be distributing any non-GPL code, allowing the user to download and automatically install their chosen voice.

[Anthony Sales]

I have to say that I too used to find the default espeak voices irritating,
but I have found that by trying the different regional accents e.g. scottish,
lancashire, west indian and playing with the rate and pitch etc I no longer
find them irritating and even though I don't need a screen-reader I sometimes
miss it when it isn't on as it gives you feedback on what you are typing etc.
I find the festival and eflite voices harder to understand, but I don't think
e-speak is any worse than the default microsoft voices although obviously not
as good as Neospeech Kate and Paul!

Tom Lloyd has been working on getting sapi5 voices working under wine and I
think it is already at an alpha stage and he is looking for testers. You can
find his thread on the ubuntu accessibility lists, although I am not sure
about the legality of distributing sapi5 voices, but I suppose if you bought
them you can do what you like with them,

drbongo

[Anthony Sales]

David, I will try out the voices you suggest, but even if they are free are they freely  distributable? In other words could I provide them preinstalled,  or would I just have to write a script that the user can run to install them themselves. If anyone knows of any other good voices please let me know!

 

drbongo

---

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Knight
Sent: 26 January 2009 17:10
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com

[Brandon Misch]

how about emax speak or whatever that solusion for emax is? 

[Anthony Sales]

I have been experimenting with emacspeak as a tool for advanced users, but it
takes up a lot of space and I have problems getting to voice to work
consistently, but it certainly a serious contender if I can get it running
smoothly and space permitting. drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Brandon Misch
Sent: Tue 27/01/2009 00:12
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!

how about emax speak or whatever that solusion for emax is?

On Jan 26, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Anthony Sales wrote:

> David and Amy,
>
> I will try to include as many speech engines and voices as I can get
> to work (without using any propriatory software). I will certainly
> install festival, flite, eflite, YASR, Linux Speaks, Speech-
> Dispatcher (but not enabled yet) etc to give people the widest
> possible choice of voices, but there are of course limitations on
> space on the cd.
>
> drbongo
>

[Nimer]

Hello,
Has anyone gotten printing working? It does not work on my machine, thus
I was wondering. Also, is it possible to upgrade open-office to 3.0
instead of 2.4?

Thanks
Nimer J

Brandon Misch wrote:
> how about emax speak or whatever that solusion for emax is?
>
> On Jan 26, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Anthony Sales wrote:
>
>> David and Amy,
>> I will try to include as many speech engines and voices as I can get
>> to work (without using any propriatory software). I will certainly
>> install festival, flite, eflite, YASR, Linux Speaks,
>> Speech-Dispatcher (but not enabled yet) etc to give people the widest
>> possible choice of voices, but there are of course limitations on
>> space on the cd.
>> drbongo
>>

>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
>> [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Amy Mason
>> *Sent:* 26 January 2009 14:12
>> *To:* vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
>> <mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com>
>> *Subject:* [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!

[David Knight]

Whether you can print or not depends on the printer you are using. Unfortunately not all printer manufacturers provide software linux drivers.
have a look at the following website, it will tell you whether the printer you are using is supported or not. If Ubuntu/Vinux doesn't support it though, the chances are it won't work :-(
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting

[Anthony Sales]

Hi Nimer, printing works fine on both of the printers I have access to a HP
Deskjet 843C and a Konica Minolta 2300DL. All I have to do is open the
printer wizard on the admin menu and click add printer, I can then connect to
them either through the LPT serial port, USB or by ethernet through the
network, and this can then be shared over the network by cable or wireless.

Could you let me know what model printer you have, how you have connected it:
LPT, USB or Ethernet and I will see if the appropriate drivers are installed.
Ubuntu supports nearly all modern printers, but because of space constraints
older drivers are eventually removed from the kernel. However in this case
you can usually download a PPD file from the manufacturers website, and
sometime just a generic raw printer driver will allow you to print text (but
not graphics or pretty formatting etc).

drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nimer
Sent: 27 January 2009 02:20
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!

[Anthony Sales]

Nimer as regards to OpenOffice three, I don't think I will include it until
it is already in the Ubuntu repositories (from 9.04 onwards ) This is because
getting all of the accessibility applications working is my first priority
and installing it in 8.10 may cause dependancy problems later on if Ubuntu
make any changes to any of the modules etc. However it is very easy to
install, all you have to do is uninstall version 2.4 and then download the
.deb file from openoffice3. I have heard that you can get it by adding the
jaunty jackalope repositories but this may also cause conflicts and
dependancy problems. My advice would be to wait for the final release of
Jaunty 9.04, and I will of course then give this the Vinux treatment! drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nimer
Sent: 27 January 2009 02:20

To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [vinux] Re: Suggestions Box!

[Fernando]

Hi,

If one of the challenges here is space, you might want to consider using
SpeechD-el with Emacs instead of Emacspeak.
http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd-el

You will need Speech dispatcher working for that though.

Thanks for this wonderful work.

Fernando

[Nimer]

I've got an HP5600 and an HP810C, and neither of them work. I get an
error telling me that the CUPS server cannot be started.

Thanks
Nimer J

[Anthony Sales]

I will look into this as soon as I get a chance! drbongo

[Brandon Misch]

are all the repos included on the live cd? or just the one on the
original 8.10 cd?

[Anthony Sales]

No the only repo I have added is the one for remastersys, I would not advise
you to add the jaunty repository yet as it will undoubtedly mess up your
system with any updates required. If you want to install openoffice three I
suggest you do it manually and then don't let any updates through until you
upgrade to jaunty, but what the hell try it and see if it works! The worst
case scenario is you will have to reinstall Ubuntu which only takes 20
minutes anyway.

[Anthony Sales]

Nimer there does seem to be a bug with cups on 1.2. It was working fine while
I was building it, but something I must have changed just before I remastered
it must have messed it up, I thought at first it was a permissions error but
it wasn't. I will have to spend a bit of time experimenting to see which step
broke it. I could not even start it up manually or update it. This will take
a bit of time. Sorry for the inconvenience, I am so focussed on the
accessibility issues that I tend tend to just assume everything else will
work. This is exactly why we need a development forum to identify these
issues, as I am just one one short fat hairy man and there are millions of
things to check. Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as
possible. If you get the chance try an earlier version say 1.1 or 1.0 and see
if they have the same issue. drbongo

[Nimer]

I was actually able to print with 1.1, so I do not believe that it is
1.1, but either it was broken in Ubuntu 8.1 or it was broken in Vinux 1.2.

[Anthony Sales]

That is promising, because there were only a few minor changes between 1.1
and 1.2, involving the menu launchers, desktop icons and brltty. I will
experiment tonight. drbongo

[Amy Mason]

Thanks,

I appreciate that you are looking at those possibilities.  I understand the space constraint, and am not even looking so much for a bunch of extra voices as I am just looking for instructions or a script to help me get where I am am going, to get the job done myself.  Waiting for a chance to go to the store, (my last 3 cd-roms were rejected by my pc as not "empty") but I will be playing with Vinux very, very soon.

Amy

[Brandon Misch]

well, the way i use vinux is with a vmware machine under windows vista
and it works great. that's another option in case your cd roms keep
getting rejected. if you have that installed and have another
operating system.

[Amy Mason]

I'm dual-booting Vista Business and XP Pro with a separate data partition. You wouldn't mind pointing me toward a link somewhere I could learn more about that option would you?  I haven't ever run virtualization before, but it seems like a good idea.

[Anthony Sales]

I am making a step by step guide on how to turn Ubuntu into Vinux with all of the terminal commands pre-typed for you so all you have to do is copy and paste and press enter. I will also eventually produce a script that will just do everything automatically so people will be able to make their own personal versions of Vinux with their own preferences pre-set. drbongo

---

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Amy Mason
Sent: 27 January 2009 23:41
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!

Thanks,

I appreciate that you are looking at those possibilities.  I understand the space constraint, and am not even looking so much for a bunch of extra voices as I am just looking for instructions or a script to help me get where I am am going, to get the job done myself.  Waiting for a chance to go to the store, (my last 3 cd-roms were rejected by my pc as not "empty") but I will be playing with Vinux very, very soon.

Amy

[Anthony Sales]

Using a virtual system is an option if you have enough ram and a fast enough
processor, you can do this with vmware on Windows or parallels(I think) on a
mac or virtualbox in linux. You will generally get a slight performance hit
though and I prefer to do full installs as sometimes virtualised systems can
have problems connecting to specfic hardware bits. The other opyion of course
is a dual boot or a USB pendrive install!

drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com

[mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brandon Misch
Sent: 28 January 2009 00:24
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!

[Anthony Sales]

I don't have a link but if you download the  vmware player and install it into vista or xp, you should then be able to install the vinux cd into a virtual drive in the data partition, I would give it a minimum of  5Gb of space an at least 512RAM to avoid any problems. You can actually set up a triple boot, but you have to have XP on the First partition, Vista on the Second and Vinux on the third. Another option is to use the wubi installer which will install Ubuntu as an application which you can unistall again if you don't like it. I haven't tried this with vinux yet but it works with Ubuntu 8.10! drbongo

---

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Amy Mason
Sent: 28 January 2009 04:39

To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!

[Tj]

Wubi does not work with Vinux.

 

On that note, I tried to install vinux 1.2 on my xp computer.  I wanted to resize the partition, howeer, I can't for some reason, get the resisor on the CD to work.  Anyone know how I can squash it down a bit?

 

 

Tj Squires

 

---

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com [mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Sales
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 5:03 AM

[Brandon Misch]

o that's cool. have heard about those options and will see about doing
that one of these days. i've tried the virtual machine and it works
great. will see about the live cd soon. can't wait to see if the other
voices will work with vm ware on windows.

[Anthony Sales]

Vinux will automatically resize the partition for you but you should do a
scandisk, turn off virtual memory and a defrag in that order before you
install it. I haven't given up on wubi yet, the iso needs to be in the same
directory as wubi.exe, has to be called ubuntu-8.10-i386.iso (or something
similar) and needs a special file on the cd iso. I managed to find a way to
fool the USB installer by adding a hidden folder to the iso, and I suspect I
will be able to fool wubi in the same way with a little skullduggary, but it
is not one of my priorities at the moment. I might get it into the next
version, maybe! drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Tj
Sent: Wed 28/01/2009 15:09
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!

Wubi does not work with Vinux.

On that note, I tried to install vinux 1.2 on my xp computer. I wanted to
resize the partition, howeer, I can't for some reason, get the resisor on
the CD to work. Anyone know how I can squash it down a bit?


Tj Squires


_____

From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vinux-de...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Anthony Sales
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 5:03 AM
To: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!


I don't have a link but if you download the vmware player and install it
into vista or xp, you should then be able to install the vinux cd into a
virtual drive in the data partition, I would give it a minimum of 5Gb of
space an at least 512RAM to avoid any problems. You can actually set up a
triple boot, but you have to have XP on the First partition, Vista on the
Second and Vinux on the third. Another option is to use the wubi installer
which will install Ubuntu as an application which you can unistall again if
you don't like it. I haven't tried this with vinux yet but it works with
Ubuntu 8.10! drbongo

_____

[David Ring]

Labrador mentions a voxin/ibmtts solution.

I'm trying to get ibmtts working in some distro but without any luck.
The voices in the ibmtts are excellent.

I wish there was a distro that would support it easily.

Best

David

On 26 Jan, 09:29, Labrador <labra...@edpnet.be> wrote:
> Hi Amy,

>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 08:12:14AM -0600, Amy Mason wrote:

> > I have to second this suggestion. It's very difficult for me, coming from
> > windows, to work with the default speech in Ubuntu. Honestly, it makes my
> > ears ache *grin*.
>

> Regarding speech, you have to know that:
> - espeak is not only free under the gpl general public license, it's also
> multilingual,

> - there exist the ttsynth /voxinsolution, that's in fact a repackaging (a

[Labrador]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 02:03:09PM -0800, David Ring wrote:
> Labrador mentions a voxin/ibmtts solution.

Yes, I mean the repackaged IBMTTS (/Eloquence) voice known as Ttsynth or
Voxin.

> I'm trying to get ibmtts working in some distro but without any luck.

Did you bought Voxin or Ttsynth ?
Maybe it's important to remind here that the IBMTTS isn't gratis nor free
(gpl): it's clearly proprietary, OK it's cheap but afaik you have to buy it
because nou need the keys of the voices.

> The voices in the ibmtts are excellent.

Yes, + for ex-Window$ people it's a good way for migrating while keeping a
sound that they know from their past.

> I wish there was a distro that would support it easily.

If I'm not wrong the Voxin project http://voxin.oralux.net made packs for
Debian and Ubuntu.
Ttsynth.com is a US project, I know some blind here in Belgium that told me
he got it working on Ubuntu.

> David
Labrador

[Anthony Sales]

I think that voxin is commercial software so even if I got it working I
wouldn't be allowed to include it on the CD. drbongo

-----Original Message-----
From: vinux-de...@googlegroups.com on behalf of David Ring
Sent: Fri 20/02/2009 22:03
To: The Vinux Development Forum
Subject: [VINUX] Re: Suggestions Box!

[Labrador]

Hi Tony,

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 08:24:41PM -0000, Anthony Sales wrote:
> I think that voxin is commercial software so even if I got it working I
> wouldn't be allowed to include it on the CD.

That's correct: Voxin or Ttsynth (these are the same = a repackage /
remaster for Linux of the Eloquence alias IBMTTS voice).
OK its cheap software but its commercial software under a license different
than the GPL general public license.

Mbrola is gratis but also non-free.

Labrad0r

[Victor Lawrence]

I recommend creating a version for CD and DVD.

On Monday, January 19, 2009 at 1:57:46 PM UTC-8, Nimer Jaber wrote:

Hello,
First, a script that installs the main apps such as office would be
good, as long as accessibility works out of the box. You could also make
an iso for DVD's, but there are a lot of people who can not burn DVD's.
Second, is there any way to import the work already completed for 8.10
to 8.04? For some reason, I am unable to get printing to work in vinux
currently.
Third, is there any way to possibly get vinux running on a suse
platform? The reason I ask is that suse has an accessible boot menu, and
it would compliment accessibility in the OS.

Thanks
Nimer J

On 19/01/09 13:45, drbongo wrote:
> Here is a list of new features I hope to be able to incorporate in the
> first release under the new Vinux name: The Username and Password
> entered during the install process will be retained, the USB Creator
> application will work with the customised live CD by default, the YASR
> console screen-reader will be installed allowing users to run without
> a GUI, the LinuxSpeaks complete audio desktop will be available and a
> whole host of accessible console based applications including lynx,
> urlview, joe, mc, oleo, mutt, vlock, partimage, alpine, irssi, mpg123
> etc...
>
> I am also trying to configure Speech-Dispatcher with Alsa, Emacspeak,
> the Linux Screen Reader, Speakup, Screader, Festival and as many other
> accessibility applications as I can find, but unfortunately I have not
> been able to get these working satisfactorily yet with Intrepid!
>
> The cost of including these extra accessibility packages is that I
> have to exclude some standard packages in order to fit them on the CD.
> I have already stripped Ubuntu down about as far as I can without
> causing any significant problems, but Open Office is now the only
> thing left I can safely remove! So the choice is this - do I remove
> everything I can and provide a bare bones system with all of the
> accessibility packages ( I suppose I could include a script to
> reinstall everything I have removed once installed) or do I leave
> Ubuntu as it is and just add on all of the accessibility applications
> creating a large iso (possibly up to 1.4Gb) that would have to be
> burned onto a DVD. This is a problem I am still wrestling with, I may
> well end up making two different versions one for CD and one for DVD!
>
> I would appreciate people's thoughts on this matter, or suggestions
> for packages (especially command line applications) that I might have
> over-looked!
>
> drbongo
>
> >
>    

[Bill Taylor]

Hello Victor,
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the 6 years since those
mails you quoted were written!

Drbongo was having trouble getting Vinux 3.0 down to 700Mb in 2009,
and nothing is smaller since then! Least of all the expectations of our
users!

Let us not put pressure on our Developers to make a CD, the early
attempts of Vinux 5 couldn't produce a working OS under about 950 Mb.

Most people have at least 1 computer with a DVD, or usb slots. ( A
downloaded .iso can be written to a usb device faster than burning to a
DVD.)

Don't forget, a HDD with a working installation of vinux / Linux can be
moved to another computer of the same architecture, and work fine.

I have an old dual xeon box with lots of Ram, which I use to install
Linux to HDDs at home, then put the pre-written drives into boxes as I
refurbish them.

All the Best,

Bill

[Devin Prater]

Maybe have a version of orca that works quickly and good with Firefox. I've heard that orca has had major problems with Firefox before.

Sent from my iPhone

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[Majid HUSSAIN]

hi there,
the version of orca that currently ships with the vinux dev images is
very, very responcive, compared to the version of orca that can be
found on your vinux 4.0 image.
it is a bit like this.
lite and dark, you can tell the differance :)
now, to send a few more buggs to mate-desktop.
tar
Majid Hussain

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

A net install version for CD might be possible.  It could also double as a CLI version should anyone want only that.

David

--

[B. Henry]

I've never had a computer that could burn a DVD, but fortunately I've never had a computer so old or odd that it would not boot from usb, and there are
work around methods for that in the off chance that someone has hardware robust enough to run Vinux4 or above that can't natively boot from USB sticks.
I like the idea of a net-install in some future, but until some folks step up to assist with some of the development and packaging anything like this
is not going to happen.
Remember guys and gals that for a while now all the heavy lifting has been done by two people with jobs, one of them with young kids, etc.
I always installed from CD size images when available, but usually from usb. Things just are a lot nicer from a usb stick, especially i9f one will use
it for more than installing, e.g. some maintainance and repair, or testing from the live system.
BTW, I love seeing really old conversation threads being picked back up, but do remember that things do change a lot over time, and software seldom gets
lighter/smaller over the long-haul.
Remember that Gates, or was it Jobs, one of the darkside visionaries said some thing to the effect that 640K should be enough RAM for anyone...LOL.

--
B.H.
Registerd Linux User 521886


Bill Taylor wrote:
Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 08:25:34PM +1000

[B. Henry]

ou have at least tried Vinux, and perhaps some other distros, but if you have not tested a Linux flavor with orca 3.14 or above, i.e. orca releases
from late summer till now, you have not had anything like the current accessible firefox experience.
Vinux5 will ship with at least orca 3.14, andcan handle upgrade to current bleeding edge 3.15 prerelease orca master branch builds which have even more
goodness in them.
There has been steady improvement in Orca since I first used it in 2010, starting with orca 2.32 I think it was. The 3.4 version on Vinux4 is pretty
good on many websites, especially if you have a reasonably fast computer, but the firefox support improvements were pretty much all evolutionary in
character until the last few months of 2014. The change between 3.12 and 3.14 was trully revolutionary, at least from the end user's point of view.
Some other important features were added between 3.4 and 3.10, so I strongly suggest trying Vinux5 when it comes out, and if you can't wait F123 is a
good place to try latest Orca if you do not want to have to do much hacking around to get things working.
Vinux5 nightly builds have worked quite well for me as I've tested them, but of course breakage is always possible, and they will not be supported on
this list ulntil there is an official beta or RC and a general call for testing.

--
B.H.
Registerd Linux User 521886

Devin Prater wrote:
Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 05:17:34AM -0600

[B. Henry]

The ability to choose between 3 graphical desktop environments is an especially nice feature of Vinux5, and should help people with a range of
computing style tastes, hardware specs, and experience.

--
B.H.
Registerd Linux User 521886

Majid HUSSAIN wrote:
Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 01:26:07PM +0000