Beginner, soliciting input for where to begin.

[Janina Sajka]

Hi,

Some comments inline below ...

Christopher Bartlett writes:
> I have decided it is time I get into the world of Linux.
> ...  The access solution I adopt must provide comprehensive 
> coverage of the environment so that I can get in and tweak what I 
> need to tweak.


Think of it in the plural.

> I'd prefer a system that provides coverage from boot 
> up to shutdown, rather than something that I have to start up after 
> the system boots up.

No operating environment provides end to end accessibility like Linux.

> I am happy learning (or relearning) how to operate in a command-line 
> environment.  I was a DOS user back in the day, and have actually 
> used Unix shell accounts, though it has been a long time.

The Linux shell is even more fun when it's a direct tty on your own
machine. For instance you probably never listened to audio streams from
your remote shell as you can perfectly do from the Linux shell.o

> That said, I would like to be able to use a GUI environment to have 
> access to applications that work under x-windows.  If I can prove to 
> myself that I don't need this access then so much the better, but I 
> want to be able to perform word-processing and other office 
> applications, browse the web and use audio editing/production 
> software with the same facility that I can under Windows.

I suspect you mayh find your facility greater in some tasks, and less in
others. Experiencing "the same" facility is an unreasonable expectation, imho.

You may find the Linux gui environment less facile than the console for
many tasks. That, at least, is my experience as a user of both
environments.

Do not expect much accessibility to audio creation and editiong,
especially in the Linux gui. It's not accessible, though there are
console apps that cover some audio tasks as well or better. On the
whole, audio is not as accessible to the blind user of Linux.

> I would like to learn how to use virtual machines so that I can run 
> Windows applications in a native Windows environment rather than 
> relying on emulation, which I understand isn't perfect.

Perfection will ever be lacking in human endeavor. That covers vm's as
well as emmulators. That being said, you can run at in a vm.

> I want to be able to use software-synthesized speech; I don't own a 
> hardware synth and I don't want to spend money on one; if I'm going 
> to buy tech toys they are going to be music production gear.

This requirement conflicts with your requirement for bootup to shutdown
access. Obviously, you get to decide how to resolve this conflict.
However, when the audio environment that software speech requires is
late to load, you can't expect software speech to provide access in boot
sequences where audio has yet to load.  Just think about it logically,
and you'll understand how that can happen. Based on that more perfect
analysis you can decide whether hardware speech synths are toys or
tools. In my environment, they're definitely the latter.

Janina