Screen reader advice for a Linux sysadmin

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Well Kathy-and-All, as far as strictly a screen-reader, my all-time favorite was 
Volcal-Eyes, quite stable. Yes, since 2003 I am running speakup, but with 
continuing frustrations involving the DecTalk. As far as N V D A  the flat 
review mode was nice, but reading a unix shell was not so intuitive as reading 
in straigh ahead linux or ajusting highlighting in JAWS.
As far as Mac, I was at an Apple store, but I wasn't able to try much inside a 
unix prompt as permissions were such that I couldn't download other voices. 
Also, for some reason it was reading alot of "spaces"
I guess we really need a replacement for orca which would read as much as actual 
windows screen-readers.
Chime