I too did not know the difference for a long time.
I really haven't implemented the power of consoles myself, as the terminal 
typically serves my CLI purpose.
But if I wanted to do some command-line games, the console would likely be the 
best choice for this.
Glenn
----- Original Message ----- 
From: D.J.J. Ring, Jr. 
To: K0LNY ?? 
Cc: [email protected] 
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2026 3:15 AM
Subject: Re: Forky installer speakup does not work after installation but orca 
does


As Glenn correctly points out, speakup only works in a console and ORCA only 
works in the graphical user interface (GUI) and opening up a text terminal 
inside the GUI. 


New comers often mix up running a text terminal in Orca compared with directly 
opening one of the virtual consoles.


A console refers to the system's low-level text interface, such as virtual 
consoles (TTYs accessed via Ctrl+Alt+F1-F6), which provide direct, full-screen 
access to the OS kernel and shell without a graphical environment. 


A terminal (or terminal emulator like GNOME Terminal which uses Orca) is a 
graphical windowed application within a desktop environment (e.g., opened via 
Ctrl+Alt+T) that emulates a console, passing input to a shell and displaying 
output.


I'm confused if everyone understands the difference because it's easy to 
confuse them but they are two different things. 


If everyone already knows this,  I apologize, but years ago I thought orca 
running GNOME terminal was what people were talking about when they mentioned 
the "console". It isn't,  it is more basic than the Graphical User Interface 
(GUI), it's running underneath the GUI, underneath Orca. Open it up as I 
described in the first paragraph. The Graphical environment GUI runs in a 
console, but the other consoles are available for use. Often F1 is the GUI so I 
proposed opening the F3 console.  Remember you can only run console apps and 
direct commands in a console but you will notice how much faster it is than the 
GUI and Orca. 




David Ring 


On Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 02:05 K0LNY ?? <[email protected]> wrote:

  I don't think you would want speakup in a terminal.
  I am guessing that most people who want Speakup rather than Orca, call up a 
  console and run Speakup there.
  Speakup won't really work in a GUI session, which is where the terminal is 
  running from.
  Glenn
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "john doe" <[email protected]>
  To: <[email protected]>
  Sent: Monday, March 23, 2026 12:44 AM
  Subject: Re: Forky installer speakup does not work after installation but 
  orca does


  On 3/22/26 20:00, Nick Gawronski wrote:
  > Hi, I just installed Forky and noticed that orca comes up as normal
  > after the installation in mate but if I try to access just the consoles
  > I have no speech from speakup what so ever. This should be fixed as
  > that could really be a mess for some users and orca is not the best in
  > terminal applications.
  >

  Why according to you, Orca is not working in the terminal?

  I use Orca in the terminal on a daily bases without problem.

  -- 
  John Doe

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