debian on a laptop?

[Karen Lewellen]

Hi there,
will try to speak to your points.
>From my experience reading and the like, actually Janina told me this ages 
back, it is a good idea to have someone at your end who is at least 
vaguely familiar with Linux if devoting an entire machine to this for the 
first time.
Just reading SOME of the commands one must type makes me dizzy sometimes 
lol.
I run both a production and a nonprofit, am a radio journalist and 
professional singer.  I do not mind tinkering in DOS, because I learned it 
well when I had more time for learning.
I have far far less time  to completely construct this system myself from 
the ground up without  someone used to and familiar with the speech 
aspects, and the compiling requirements  of Linux nearby to call.
Given my druthers I would duplicate my first learning experience, get 
trained in the screen reader   the basics of the operating system and a 
couple of my major programs,  and learn where to look or read for help.
I would happily pay for this, in town if I could find it.

I am not lazy, just honest. I would rather concentrate on learning how to 
run what I must run, once constructed to make running easy if that makes 
sense, read documentation with a framework of understanding  that moves 
me 
forward.  I know what my talents are, and what they are not, or more how I 
can use my time these days  grin.
I think too I would rather learn first hand with someone, if I must do the 
constructing, but would rather not have to do much construction, 
certainly not alone.
My computers are critical tools in my trade, I want my Linux machine to be 
what my other machines already are.  ones I can count on as functional with 
a minimum  amount of bugs, constant  upgrading and issues.  I want to 
enhance how I make my living and that means setup so I can count on it, and 
debian seems to put out solid packages.
Think out of, ormostlyout of the box.
As for my goals,  two, perhaps three.  I have in a sealed box the edition 
of wordperfect created for Linux / UNIX.   unless I am sure this can be 
run, I am not going to do word processing, leaving only two.
I have never been a windows user, so am not working from that frame of 
reference at all. solid command line is my life as I use DOS every single 
day, several hours a day.
I seek slightly more Internet flexibility than I am getting now in terms 
of browsers.  if that means ebrowse then terrific, or firefox if it works 
in debian.  Ray keeps speaking of ice Wiesel, but I have not heard 
enough to know if this is the best alternative option.  if I can I want to 
access youtube materials, audio in particular,  or youtube like material 
as well thas I am 
starting to need this more  and more for work.  Lillypond is a 
composing package, so I would want to run this properly as well.
I would add and include in my Internet concept getting and downloading 
books,  both nls to my player, not on the computer, and or library e-book 
/ audio book content and burning that content to a cd  for playing n say a 
victor reader classic, or a standard cd  player.
as for my desire for dectalk, I appreciate that others have different 
experiences.  Still I have used dectalk for computing and stand alone 
reading, I have a reading edge, for more than 15 years.  my goal is to add 
this computer to my professional tools, fill in the gaps that I cannot 
already do elsewhere and  with as little   down time as 
possible.
Actually my favorite voice still likely remains the old vert ones, but oh 
well.
getting to working is what I want to minimize, meaning I want to choose 
in advance hardware in a fashion that  will work.  I would like to be able 
to travel with this machine, use the Internet either via dsl or dial up if the only 
option, on the road, as well as plug it into my rooter here at home when 
I need it.
since I can do dsl  in DOS, and friends come over with their windows 
laptops and go on the Internet at my house, I feel sure it should be 
achievable in Linux too.
Is this more clear?
Karen

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011, Trevor Saunders wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:25:38PM -0500, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>> Granted I have the desktop hardware sitting in my office for a Linux
>> box, but am told no one in Toronto can do this sort of work from an
>> access standpoint.
>
> hmm? I'm not sure what you mean, what work is this?  I ee you are
> writing from a shellworld email so my first gues would be some sort of
> syadminy thing, which I would think you could do just fine from a
> linux, imho more comfortably than from a windows one.
>
>> My two questions are basic hardware specifications if I go with
>> laptop instead, and what about speech?
>
> for what hardware it mostly depends on what you plan to do with the
> machine, but I'd also keep in mind what hardware is likely to take work
> to get working.
>
>> I prefer tectalk speech if I can get it, which I guess? meaning I
>> could be wrong, means an external synthesizer?
>
> I've never heard of techtalk to you mean the ibmtts / ttsynth eliquence
> like thing?  Personally I've always been perfectly fine with espeak, but
> I understand plenty of others feel differently.
>
> Trev
>
>> thanks in advance,
>> Karen
>>
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