I did a raw install of Ubuntu Karmic x64 Beta in VirutualBox, and here's the current status for such an installation. Note that I did a visual install, not an accessible install:
The install has a nice slide show. One of the slides claimed Ubuntu was "one of the most accessible operating systems." I thought that was interesting. There were some goobers, but overall, the OS rocks for sighted users, even in Beta. It is easy to see why Ubuntu remains the popular Linux OS. Karmic is going to be a well received release. Orca ran out-of-the-box. However, speech got queued in Speech Dispatcher, and hitting escape or any other key did nothing to stop it. Even killing Orca did not stop it. You have to listen to every word Orca thinks is available to be read. This makes Orca completely unusable. I installed Gnome Speech Services, and switched to that, but it crashes the virtual machine. So basically, Karmic Beta is awesome for sighted users, but does not work out-of-the-box for blind/VI users. I'm going to try removing Pulse Audio. I'll let you know if I find any combo that works well with Orca. Bill -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
