Speakup works fine in the console on Debian testing. It is possible I
changed something since I installed it a while back. I assume you
installed the 'espeak' package. Without knowing how you installed it or
what you did, it is hard to troubleshoot remotely.
On 3/23/26 1:10 PM, Nick Gawronski wrote:
Hi, Yes I totally understand and this is what I meant when I said that
speakup works much better in the console then orca does in the
graphical terminal. My issue is that on Forky, if I press control and
alt and f1 I get no speech from the espeakup software and when working
with the shell I prefer to use the console and not the graphical
terminal application as like I said before orca will read things that
speakup will not as it reads what updates and not what has already
been read. I prefer working in the text consoles and not the
graphical terminals when I need to use the shell. Nick Gawronski
On 3/23/2026 3:15 AM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
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]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: <[email protected] <mailto:debian-
[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
