Debian with Orca

Mon Oct 9 02:34:52 UTC 2023

d    I think Bookworm uses Pipewire, so on my system there is a process 
called pipewire-pulse.  I don't think you have to have pulse audio 
running at all.  I may have disabled it using 'systemctl' or uninstalled 
it, but I can't remember at the moment.

On 10/8/23 10:52, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I happen to have Debian 12 Bookworm installed in a Qemu virtual machine, so
> tried, using lightdm as login manager and mate as desktop.
>
> Orca was already installed, but not started in mate
>
>  From mate-terminal I could install espeakup typing as root:
> apt-get install espeakup.
>
> Then as advised edited /etc/modules to include a line with:
> speakup_soft
>
> I did not edit /etc/default/espeakup as in this VM there is only one virtual
> sound card and did not care for which voice to use.
>
> Then switching to tty2 pressing ctrl-alt-f2 did indeed make espeakup talking in
> this console.
>
> But if I start Orca in mate-terminal I can't get speech in the text console.
>
> This reminds me a discussion I had with Samuel long ago: as is a default setting
> in Slint I suggested to also include in Debian a line like this in
> /etc/pulse/default.pa to redirect the pulse's output stream to alsa's mixer,
> thus avoiding that both pulse and alsa claim the same card:
>
> load-module module-alsa-sink device=dmix
>
>
> This was not accepted for some reason that I do not recall exactly.
>
> However you could instead try to use one of the other screenreaders as stated in
> the Debian wiki. Caveat: I did not try these other methods.
>
> Cheers,
> Didier
>
> Le 08/10/2023 à 15:37, Linux for blind general discussion a écrit :
>>      In order to have speech in the text consoles, you need to make sure Speakup
>> or BRLTTY or another screenreader is active.  It works just fine with Speakup.
>> You may want to read the Debian accessibility FAQ.
>>
>> This is the section on Speech support.
>>
>> https://wiki.debian.org/accessibility#Speech_Support
>>
>> ORCA will be on console 7 by default, and you can easily switch to a text
>> console and have both working at the same time.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/7/2023 1:54 PM, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
>>> In a seemingly endless trek to get both Windows 11 and debian
>>> Linux from a 3-year-old laptop I recently acquired, I had been
>>> trying to install debian Linux with orca on to a large-capacity
>>> thumb drive.  The debian bullseye installs were taking as long as
>>> twelve hours or so to do and when I finally got one to finish, it
>>> was as slow as molasses in January or the same thing in July in
>>> the Southern hemisphere and was completely useless except for ssh
>>> logins from another computer using the command-line or console
>>> mode.
>>>
>>>      Orca never did anything except an occasional halting
>>> error message.
>>>
>>>      Finally, I took a one-terabyte Crucial (Brand name) usb
>>> drive and decided to try that.  The twelve-hour marathon reduced
>>> to less than an hour and the orca installation is talking as well
>>> as it does on a desktop system, here.  The real problem was the
>>> slowness of data transfer in and out of the usb thumb drive.  The
>>> orca screen reader and mate terminal are responding nicely and fast
>>> and all seems well so far.
>>>
>>>      Now for some questions:
>>>
>>>      I am not new to orca but, in the couple of years I have
>>> been trying it on the desktop and now, the laptop, I really miss
>>> having a command-line console which I can get with no problem if
>>> I ssh in to either orca system with a command-line Linux box.
>>>
>>>      This is the standard debian install installation image
>>> one can download and it found the laptop sound interface without
>>> any special measures such as installing a usb sound card .  On
>>> some systems, you do get command-line consoles by pressing Control+Alt+F2
>>> and you can go back to the GUI by Control+Alt+f1.  I think there are
>>> maybe 5 more command-line consoles in which speakup talks.  On
>>> this installation, Control+Alt+f2 prompts one to type a command or ESC to
>>> exit.  One of the other just kills speech and nothing much seems
>>> to happen.  Like the spoiled rich kid on Christmas morning, I
>>> want it all but not in a nasty way so I am not complaining.  If
>>> necessary, I could get another hopefully fast usb drive and
>>> install debian without the GUI and get the consoles but since this
>>> is a laptop, every extra piece of gear makes it less portable.
>>> Also, Every instance of Linux one makes will have a different ssh
>>> host key unless one copies the same key to all instances.
>>> Otherwise the systems you are using ssh to talk to think
>>> something's wrong when they see the different host keys.
>>>
>>>      I would also like to say some good words about slint.  I
>>> was able to get a command-line set of consoles but the only way I
>>> could get anything to talk was to plug in a usb sound card.  One
>>> such card was a Creative Labs SoundBlaster series usb sound card
>>> which worked perfectly for the speakup voice plus I also tried
>>> another very inexpensive sound card which also worked with no
>>> difference between the Creative Labs and the sound card whose
>>> name escapes me, but slint couldn't automatically find this
>>> laptop's built-in sound card.
>>>
>>>      Everything else in slint that I tried appears to have no
>>> problems .
>>>
>>>      Sound system hardware is so proprietary that audio issues
>>> in Linux are like grains of sand on the beach, common and gritty
>>> when you have to deal with them.
>>>
>>>      So, my primary question is am I missing something about
>>> the command consoles?  The mate terminal seems to be working but
>>> it's not quite the same as a command-line console.
>>>
>>> Martin
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