An update and an introduction

Hello everyone. My name is Kaz and I'm one of the sighted members of the Vinux team. Some of you may have read my personal blog, Daisy Scented Dreams, and in particular this post in which I discuss suggested etiquette when interacting with the vision impaired members of society. I have been involved in Vinux documentation over the last year as my partner, Rob, is the project manager. I have also designed the new Vinux logo which will be used on the next release and I'm very excited about this.

And now a word from Rob to fill you in on where things stand with the Vinux project...

"Developing for accessibility on Linux is a very difficult skill set to 
find, if you know of anyone who could help or yourself please get in 
touch with us. Give friends Vinux CD's, blog and post to social network about us, help 
us provide media such as videos or audio walkthroughs about what you 
love about Vinux or your favourite applications.
 

For people wanting to get involved with testing Vinux images first they 
must subscribe to the mailing list and introduce themselves to Bill 
Taylor our testing team leader.

Vinux 5 is still under debvelopment and has a way to go. We do not want to rush a release 

before all issues are addressed and all bugs ironed out.

A very common question is "What will be new with Vinux 5?" 

To start off we have Orca 3.12, Espeak 1.4.8 and hopefully a great suite 
of packages that Vinux members have come to rely on from our releases.


The development stage for Vinux 5 started very early this cycle, 
probably December/January, with some packages being rebuilt from Vinux 4 
and others being upgraded and reviewed."

Please remember that Vinux very much belongs to the community. It is run on a

 completely volunteer basis and could not exist without community support. If you 

feel you can contribute in any way, get in touch with Rob at fudge@thefudge.net and 

offer your support.

Thanks for reading, and we will keep you updated as the development moves along.   

Vinux 3.0.2 released!

We are happy to announce the release of Vinux 3.0.2, based on Ubuntu 10.04.4. Changes in this release include:

Kernel 2.6.32.39.
Orca XDesktop 3.1.19.Firefox 10.0.2.Thunderbird 10.0.2.
Minor package changes as well as Vinux specific console branding grub configuration.
Vinux tips on console log in.
Orca Customizations and man text scripts thanks to StormDragon.
Easy install scripts optimized.
Extra system sound schemes added.
USB install script included.
Luke's speakup DKMS package included, you no longer need to run restorespeech after a new kernel is installed. Speakup automatically builds at kernel install. Please be sure to leave Linux-headers-generic metapackage installed.
CFH, openssh and CPU frequency daemon installed by default.
Remastersys no longer deletes ssh keyss for remastering.
YASR is no longer included, encountered frequent errors and not used.
Removed ISO master and GTK record my desktop to insure the CD image is under 700 MB. Vinux 3.0.2 manages extra sources with apt-add-repository, /etc/apt/sources.list.d contains stable Mozilla, vinux and more package archives. The default desktop is Classic GNOME 2.x as you have come to expect from Vinux LTS releases.
This version is available as CD and DVD both 32-bit and 64-bit images, USB and Virtual editions.
Warning: The DVD images contain some non-free codecs and packages. Using these versions in the USA, Japan and countries where the legislation allows patents to apply to software and distribution of restricted technologies may require the acquisition of 3rd party licenses.

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a special thanks to the following people:
Rob Whyte for building the CD and DVD images.
Dedicated testers, Nimer Jaber and the development/testing teams for feature suggestions and feedback.
Special thank you to Bill Taylor for his constant dedication to testing and detailed reporting of bugs throughout this development cycle. Although Bill wasn't expecting recognition, his contribution has been outstanding.
Thanks to everyone for your support and feature suggestions.

Please head on over to:

http://vinuxproject.org/downloads

to download your prefered release.

It is our hope that this release continues to deliver what you have come to expect from Vinux.

Guess who's back?

Hello.

My name is Mobeen Iqbal or Mo for short, and I have recently taken on the roll of Vinux project manager. As many of you may already know, on the 8th of October 2011 Tony Sales, the founder of Vinux announced that he would no longer be able to continue his involvement and work on the Vinux project. Any voluntary project can take up a lot of someone's personal time. Though we are all extremely saddened by Tony's departure, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank Tony for all his hard work both in starting Vinux and developing and maintaining Vinux releases. The amount of work and dedication he has poured in to Vinux is admirable. We wish him all the best for the future and welcome him if he wants to continue work on the project at a later time.

I would also like to thank everyone for the over whelming amount of support and encouragement on and off the Vinux lists which I have received to take on the roll of project manager over the last 5 weeks.

Though at times our mailing lists have been some what quiet, I can assure you I have been making my way around the Vinux teams, users and familiarizing
Myself. Rob Whyte is currently working on Vinux development and taking on the roll Tony was filling in producing updated Vinux releases. However, we are looking to have our build process automated very soon; this should make life a lot easier for people working on the project. I'd like to say a big thanks to Rob for his time in producing updates to our current stable release of Vinux, liaising with developers to iron out bugs and helping out all teams in general. I'd also like to say a huge thanks to Luke Yelavich, our Lead Tech who is currently spending hours of his time working on getting our new build process up and running.

Vinux is continuing to improve and we have not lost any drive or determination. We still have a small core of dedicated contributors who work on Vinux in their own time.
We have been conducting team meetings and they have produced a lot of good ideas and we have started to implement them. Some of the changes we hope to make over the coming months include:

We intend to start a blueprint Vinux project on Launchpad.
This will be a place where people can start an idea and others can follow the progress or provide feedback/suggestions for improvement.

We now have a Vinux Ventrilo server which is push to talk voice chat.
We are implementing an open door policy on our Ventrilo server where Rob and I plan to be available two nights a week for people to drop in and chat with us.

We are taking another look at Vinux media, such as CD's and USB pen drives as well as the possibility of T-Shirts, caps, mugs even stickers and are hoping to setup some kind of distribution network across the world so people can purchase media in their country of residents. We are also in the process of implementing a global contact scheme for users who need on the ground Vinux support.

We are setting up a Vinux YouTube channel so look out for videos being uploaded soon.
If you have a topic that you feel has not been covered or needs revisiting we welcome your input. Also if you would like us to cover a specific topic or provide a walkthrough for a specific app in a video, please don't hesitate to get in touch and we will see what we can do.

We still need more people to be a part of our various Vinux teams, if you have some time let us know what area you would like to contribute in and please
join up.
Although there is no pay, there are many rewards and all contributions how ever large or small are welcome and much appreciated. So far our teams consist of web development, testing, documentation, public relations and the development team.

We are looking in to implementing a donations system on the website.

We are also in the process of updating our user manual and switching to a new wiki platform which should be more intuitive and easier to navigate.

Hopefully over the coming months, we will be demonstrating Vinux at various exhibitions’ across the world, please keep an eye on our news page or on the email lists just in case we're in your area.

You can also buy Vinux computers or laptops, or have Vinux installed on your machine or pen drive for you. Although these services are only available in the UK at present, we are looking in to providing them internationally.

So, where is Vinux going, glad you asked!

Vinux 4.0 is our next long term support release, or referred to as LTS. This will be based on Ubuntu 12.04, and will use the Unity desktop instead of the gnome desktop. Our very talented lead tech Luke Yelavich has been working tirelessly to build a Vinux build process such as the one used by Ubuntu. This offers us many new features that our previous manual build process did not allow, such as extra language support and WUBI support so you can install Vinux to your computer and boot from it without partitioning your hard drive.

For those who are really not sure of Unity we will be having a Vinux 3.3 development build in preparation for Vinux 4.0, this will be for testing
and staging for the next LTS.

We will also be releasing an update to Vinux 3.0.1 shortly, V3.0.2 which is still based on Ubuntu Lucid.

The next 12 months should be an exciting time for us all. I'd like to thank everyone for their help and support. Both the various teams and developers working behind the scenes to keep the project alive and producing releases, and of course you, the users. Its you that make Vinux what it is today. With your input, Vinux will hopefully continue for years to come. Let’s make Vinux the number one distribution for anyone with a disability and have a great time while we're at it!

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish...

I regret to inform you that due to serious personal/family issues that I would rather not discuss publicly I will be unable to continue working on the Vinux Project (or any other development project) for the foreseeable future, if ever. I am very sorry for all of the problems and difficulties this might cause but I am sure there is now enough of a community of developers to continue with the project without my personal help or advice. I think there are already other members of the development team who already have admin status for most of the lists, repos and websites etc. If there are any other resources and/or passwords etc developers need from me please contact me personally and I will help with any hand-over to the best of my ability. I will be disabling the vinux.org.uk server in a few weeks time when the current contract runs out. Once again I am very sorry to be making this announcement and would like to thank all of the people who have contributed to the Vinux Project over the years without whom it would just not of been possible. I believe the Vinux project will continue for a long time and will go from strength to strength, until hopefully all mainstream distributions are fully accessible...

drbongo (signing off)

A Tale of Two CD's:

I haven't posted anything on the blog for months! Not because of a lack of interest, but because I have been so busy preparing for the release of Vinux 3.2 and rather surprisingly the release of Vinux 3.2.1 just a week or so afterwards. It has taken a lot of effort to adapt the Vinux Build Scripts to work with Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' and we have introduced a number of new packages and scripts. Vinux 3.2  was a cutting edge release featuring the latest versions of Orca and Speech-Dispatcher from the daily build repositories  available as CD and DVD in both 32 and 64 bit editions. The DVD version provided the same software as the CD but with the addition of libreoffice and some non-free multimedia codecs etc. The default desktop was Classic Gnome 2.x but Unity was also available from the GDM login screen if your video card supports 3D. This release included the Pico TTS voices for the first time in addition to Espeak, the Epiphany Internet Browser and new built-in keybindings to quickly organise multiple windows with x-tile. It also featured some new packages including Orca-Teacher and  Talking Clock. This version also played a system bell when the isolinux boot screen appeared allowing you to select different boot options including an experimental 'toram' mode. There was also a Vinux 3.2 PLUS edition which features lots of extra packages for partially sighted users. I  also managed to fit more text tools on the CD edition including: sox gpm screen, splitvt, figlet, cmatrix, txt2html, html2text, pdf2svg, pstotext, units mc, trash-cli, vrms, dict, sc, htop, linuxinfo, w3m, elinks-lite, urlview, finch, axel, calcurse and tdl. However, Vinux 3.2 had a few bugs including: Selecting the Cicero speech synth would crash Orca and you would have to run: orca -t to reset everything back to the way it was. The x-tile keybinding to 'quad tile' open windows was set to 'win+alt+v' by accident - to correct the user had  open the keyboard shortcuts manager and re-assign it to 'win+alt+q' - then the 'vertical tile' option would work as well (win+alt+v). The most serious issue was that Pulseaudio still crashed after boot on a small number of soundcards.

 

So because of these issues we have now released Vinux 3.2.1 - the main difference between this and the recently released Vinux 3.2 is that by default it boots with Pulseaudio running in 'user' mode rather than 'system' mode. This prevents pulseaudio from crashing at boot on a small number of sound cards, but it means that speakup is not available from the live CD or immediately after installation. However, there are now two simple commands for switching Pulseaudio from user to system mode in conjunction with a reboot of the machine. To switch to system mode and enable speakup, simply run: sudo pulsesystem - in a terminal and to switch back to user mode, simply run: sudo pulseuser - in a terminal. This new release also includes an accessible Zenity front end for Unetbootin which allows users to install Vinux to a USB pendrive with persistent storage. Users who have already installed Vinux 3.2 can upgrade to this version by simply running the following three commands in a terminal:

wget http://www.vinux.org.uk/script/upgrade_script.tar.gz

tar -zxvf upgrade_script.tar.gz

sudo ./upgrade.sh

There are two new scripts included in Vinux 3.2.1, usbinstall and cdburn. These are accessible scripts for installing Vinux to a USB pendrive, and for burning a CD/DVD then checking the md5sum of the burnt CD/DVD. They are still prototype scripts with no error checking so I have not included them in the menus yet, they must be launched by pressing alt+f2 and then typing usbinstall or cdburn - then pressing enter.

USBinstall - Instructions.

1. After launching the usbinstall script a zenity file selection dialog will appear. Use this to select the ISO you want to install to the pen drive.

2. Next you will be asked to enter the name/path of the USB pen drive. this will usually be something like /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc - the default entry is /dev/sd - so all you have to do is type one letter 'b' or 'c; etc and press enter. However make sure you provide the correct letter as you could potentially wipe a partition or hard drive if you use for example /dev/sda. The easiest way to find the correct letter is to run 'df' in a terminal after inserting the pendrive - it will be the last one in the list.

3. Now you must enter the size of the persistent storage file in MB - the default value is 9999 which will just use all of the available space (up to 10GB) but you can use less if you want to.

4. Next you must decide how many seconds you want to set the notification for - this will pop up an alert when the build has (probably) finished. the default setting is 1200 (20 minutes) which is a safe setting - if you reduce this there is a chance that when the notification goes off the installation will not have finished. There is no way for us to detect when the installation is finished yet - so this is just a guess, most installations take between 10-15 minutes, so set it for longer if you want to be extra safe.

5. You then have to enter your password and then press enter for the process to start. Do not disconnect the pendrive or make any changes to it until the notification appears. When you are told the process has finished press enter to quit the program, and then remove the pendrive.

CDburn - instructions

1. When you launch the application a Zenity file selection dialog will appear, use this to select the ISO you want to burn. The application will then calculate the md5sum of the ISO file.

2. Next you have to enter the path to the cd/dvd burner, if you only have one optical drive/burner this will be /dev/cdrom (which is the default entry) otherwise you will have to add the appropriate number e.g. /dev/cdrom1 or /dev/cdrom2 etc. Make sure the blank disk is in the drive before you do this.

3. The CD/DVD will now be burned. when it is finished the draw will eject (in most cases) and you will be asked to reinsert the CD and click OK. make sure you close the draw and let the CD/DVD spin up before you click OK (although I have built in a 30 second delay).

4. The application will now calculate the md5sum of the burnt CD/DVD and tell you whether the burn was successful or a failure. When you click OK the CD/DVD will be ejected (in most cases). Close the draw and click OK to exit.

  

The Two Towers: Unity and the Gnome Shell!

In the aftermath of the release of 3.0.1 there has now been time for the dust to settle and I have been surveying the way ahead (does this make me Aragon?). We have achieved a great deal over the last three releases and I think we have done pretty much everything it is possible to do given the number of people involved and our dependence on upstream projects we can do little to influence. Vinux 3.0.1 is probably the most stable and accessible release we have made, in spite of the small number of people who have had problems with lack of sound or having a Mandarin voice variant by default. One of the areas where the most work is needed is with the performance of Orca with Firefox. This is a complex issue and will take a lot of work to sort out. The vast majority of this work lies with the Orca team who are also doing a great job given the small number of (volunteer) developers involved. Another area where Vinux/Linux Accessibility could improve would be the availability of a wider variety of voices, although I think much of this is down to what you are used to rather than which is the best voice - a very subjective issue. Unfortunately these are the least of my worries at the moment because we face an assault on accessibility of epic proportions from two sources in the very near future. In April Ubuntu will switch to the Unity desktop and Gnome will switch to the Gnome Shell with the release of Ubuntu 11.04 (The Nasty Narwhal?) and Gnome 3.0 respectively. Both of these desktops rely heavily on 3D technology and at the moment accessibility seems to be almost non-existent. There has been talk about Ubuntu making the system fall back to Gnome if there was no 3D acceleration but it seems that both Ubuntu and Gnome are now creating special 2D versions of Unity (using QT) and the Gnome Shell. Now although accessibility will improve over time this effectively means that the Gnome 2.x desktop is now dead in the water. Most distros will switch to the Gnome Shell and support and development for the existing desktop will wither away. So from April onwards there will be a major obstacle to the continued development of Vinux. Firstly it is likely that most of the existing buildscripts will have to be completely rewritten to work with Unity and the Gnome Shell (if that is actually possible), people without 3D accelleration may have problems running the lower priority 2D backup versions and as usual accessibility will have been put backwards several years and be playing catch up again - because of changes to the graphical system which have no benefits at all for a visually impaired user. On top of this, whilst the appointment of team coordinators has taken a significant amount of responsibility off my shoulders, we still don't have enough core developers working on the build scripts and it is simply too much work for one person to do, in addition to holding down a full-time job and trying to have a 'normal' family life (whatever that means!).

So we need to come up with a strategy for dealing with these issues. In terms of core developers I can see a solution of sorts. I need to recruit some apprentices so I can teach them the ways of the force, I mean bash scripting and how the whole process works. That way in time the workload of the core development can be shared; either by taking turns to make a release, working on different sections of the build process or even making completely separate versions or flavours of Vinux. So with this in mind I intend to work on a set of tutorials to explain how the buildscripts work and how all the contents of the Vinuxscripts repository fit together to create the final version. Having read this people can then decide whether they are willing and able to become a Padawan and learn the ways of Bash. That is the easy bit. More difficult is which way to go in the future. Do we stick with Ubuntu and see what Unity has to offer? Do we try out the Gnome Shell and see if that is any more accessible than Unity is? Do we try to keep Gnome 2.x on a life support machine for as long as possible while Unity and the Gnome Shell evolve? Do we try out other desktop environments like LXDE and XFCE and try to make them accessible? Do we stick with Ubuntu or switch to Mint, Debian Mint or just pure Debian? Do we switch to a rolling release model or stick with a reinstall every year or two? I have to say, my gut feeling at the moment is to jump to Debian and start investigating XFCE and the possibility of a Debian based rolling release. So I would ask you to have a good think about all of these issues and we will have another Vinux Conference on IRC at the end of the month to try and make some decisions about the direction we go in.

Vinux 3.0.1 Released!

The Vinux 3.0.1 release based on Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS is now available for download. This combines all of the accessibility of Vinux 3.1 with the stability of Vinux 3.0 as well as a few completely new features. In addition to the existing three screen-readers (Orca, Speakup and YASR) this release also includes Emacspeak 'The Complete Audio Desktop' pre-configured and ready to go out of the box. You can now create audio books from text-based files using our exclusive Audiobook Converter package, browse our new HTML based Vinux Manual to help get you started, install the latest version of Libre Office using an EasyInstall script, and customise your desktop experience with Ubuntu Tweak. It is initially available as a 32bit CD, a 64bit CD, a 32bit DVD version and a 64bit DVD version (which both comes with Libre Office and non-free multimedia codecs pre-installed). The VMWare virtual edition, and a 32bit USB version will be available shortly. An upgrade script has also been released that allows people to upgrade from Vinux 3.0 to 3.0.1:

In order to update run the following commands in a terminal:

git clone git://vinuxscripts.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/vinuxscripts/vinuxscripts

cd vinuxscripts

sudo make install

sudo buildvinux

This will start the interactive Vinux buildscript which runs in a terminal, it will beep when it expects input from the user. I have tested this script on Vinux 3.0 and it upgraded without any issues, but if you have installed software which I haven't I cannot guarantee that it won't mess that up, so make a backup of everything before you upgrade. I know that the script works, but I am not sure how usable it is at the moment because of the amount of data which will be read out. Most of the questions are straight-forward - when emacspeak is installed you will have to select 'espeak' and then 'none' for hardware synths. When the script has finished running you should restart the computer and try out your shiny new Vinux 3.0.1 - I would like feedback on the usability of the script - I have also uploaded a simplified non-interactive version of the script to the mailing list which just asks for your username and doesn't install emacspeak.

One or two people have found that after the installation of 3.0.1 Orca and Speakup start talking gibberish. In fact it is trying to read English text in Mandarin. We do not know why this has happened, but we suspect that it is to do with a corrupted ISO, CD or a unreliable CD drive. If this happens you can fix Orca by opening the Orca Preferences Manager and selecting another voice. We recommend selecting the English(en) voice if you want the default voice. However, to fix Speakup you will have to run:

sudo rm -f /usr/share/espeak-data/voices/zh

This will delete the Mandarin voice, or try replacing and renaming the 'zh' voice file with your preferred voice from the /usr/share/espeak-data/voices/en/ directory.

As always we do not recommend that users update any packages after installing Vinux unless they have a very good reason to do so. Installing unnecessary updates can break your system and it may be very difficult or impossible to repair if you lose speech without performing a complete re-installation. Although not invulnerable to viruses and hacking, Linux is significantly more secure than Windows and unless you are running a server with open ports and/or installing packages from untrusted third party sources, you are unlikely to have any major security issues (although we obviously can't guarantee this). If you are running a server with open ports then you should install security patches when they are available, and if you really want to try a new version of a specific package then only update that individual package, don't just install all of the available updates. If you do decide to install updates despite this warning then please make a backup of your files and/or installation before doing so.

I will now be having a break from Vinux Development for a few weeks, which will give me time to reflect on how the project is going and in what direction it should take next. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release...

Vinux Conference a Success!

I am pleased to say that the online meeting to discuss the future development of Vinux took place last night and we had about thirty participants on and off, although some people had a few teething problems using IRC for the first time. It was decided that Vinux would continue to be based on Ubuntu for the time being, but that we would look into the possibility of building upon Debian Mint and/or Squeeze in the meantime, just in case Ubuntu 11.04 and/or the new Unity desktop and the Wayland Display Server cause any unexpected accessibility issues. Ten members of the Vinux Support/Development List were also duly elected as Team Coordinators: BuildScripts - Tony Sales, Software Development - Don Marang, Testing - Nimer Jaber, Website - Mobeen Iqbal, Publicity - Storm Dragon, Fundraising - Arianna Sepulveda, Documentation is shared by Nimer Jaber, Krishnakant and Merrill Woolnough, and we accepted offers for Translated Versions of Vinux from Kris (Dutch), Ferdinand/Joey (German) , Cleverson/Rui (Portuguese) and Burt (Spanish).

Vinux IRC Meeting Agenda:

Event: Vinux Development Meeting
Date: Saturday 22nd January
Time 21:00 GMT
Location: irc.blufudge.net #vinux

Agenda

1. Development Roles

As always the main problem faced by the Vinux Project is the relatively small number of people who are willing and able to contribute in some way. I would like to recruit more people to help with development and try to formalise the different roles. As I see it there are six distinct roles, which could assigned to an individual or shared between a small team, and of course there is nothing to stop one person performing more than one role if they wish. The six roles are:

A. Build Script Team - Writing and testing the build scripts then producing the final releases of Vinux.

B. Software Development Team - Writing and testing new packages then adding them to the Vinux repository.

C. Testing Team - Testing individually assigned packages in the alpha,beta and release candidates and passing the feedback to the build script and/or software development team.

D. Translations Team - Creating Vinux isos in new languages once the build script is finalised and uploading them to the website and/or mirrors.

E. Website/Hosting Team - Maintaining the website, wiki, mirrors, mailing lists and publicity etc.

F. Documentation Team - Writing how-to articles for the Quickstart Guide and the Vinux Manual.

Initially we just need people to volunteer to be part of a team, and depending upon the number of responses we get, I would then like to appoint a member of each team as the coordinator of that team.

2. Which distribution should we base Vinux on?

This is another issue which crops up every year - should we stick with Ubuntu, or switch to another distro. Ubuntu offers many advantages such as hardware compatibility, but it has a very fast release cycle and is planning to make some major changes in its next release (Gnome>Unity and Xorg>Wayland) and we have no idea how this will effect accessibility. There are other distributions we could base Vinux on including: Debian, Linux Mint and PCLInuxOS - however the one that holds the most promise at the moment is Debian Mint. This offers the hardware detection of Ubuntu, with a rolling release based on Debian Squeeze, meaning once installed there shouldn't ever be a need to reinstall. So the question is: do we stick with Ubuntu, Switch to Debian Mint or develop both in parallel initially to see what happens. The answer to this will depend largely on whether we have enough people to support two versions or not, and of course whether people think this is a good idea or not.

3. Any Other Business

Captain's Log: Stardate 21122010

We are at the end of another long year for the Vinux Project and we have managed to release Vinux 3.1 in all of its various forms before the new year. So now it is time to hang our developer's gloves up and have a good rest! So thanks to everyone who contributed to this release in whatever way they could, Vinux wouldn't be possible without a friendly, helpful community of people who all have the same goal: open-source accessibility for everyone. But as always, I am thinking about the future and trying to anticipate in which direction the project should go. So here are a few things for everyone to mull over during the holidays, which will roughly form the agenda for the online meeting I would like to hold in the new year, probably on our IRC channel.

Firstly, while the community has slowly grown over the last year, we are still painfully short of core developers who have the time and skill to keep the project going. Granted we now have lots of people who help out in a variety of peripheral ways such as; hosting vinux iso images, writing new packages, testing alpha and beta releases, answering queries on the support list etc. I am not going to name any names (in case I leave someone out) but you know who you are. However at the moment there are really only three core developers: Bill Cox, Mobeen Iqbal and myself who actually produce Vinux releases. Bill was the main driving force behind the Vinux 3.0 release, but due to health problems this year he has not been able to take a lead role in the latest release (although he still provided invaluable help and advice). Mobeen produces the VMWare Virtual Edition of Vinux and a special version of the USB Edition which can be installed to a pendrive from Windows, which are very popular with newbies who are afraid of messing up their Windows installations (with good reason). This means that I produce the final release of Vinux, create all of the different versions, upload them to the servers, update the website and then make announcements on the relevant mailing lists and forums etc. This may not sound like a lot, but given that I have a full-time teaching job and a family to look after, I can honestly say that I spend nearly all of my evenings, weekends and holidays working on Vinux to the exclusion of all other activities. Not that I am complaining or trying to be a martyr, I took on the responsibility when I started the project, but sometimes the pressure of having to work on Vinux instead of relaxing becomes overwhelming. So as always, here is my annual appeal for help!

There are lots of different ways in which people can help with the development of Vinux, irrespective of their skills and knowledge. I will now identify some roles that each and everyone of you can play in the Vinux project:

Testing - This basically means testing out alpha and beta versions of Vinux before the official release is made. Indeed many of you already provide feedback, but up to now it has been in a very haphazard way. We need to formalise the testing process with specific individuals identified to test specific packages and provide detailed feedback - not just X doesn't work. We will also need someone to coordinate the testing and feedback process, so we could do with a 'Testing Taj' to step foward...

Documentation - This is something that users of any level can do, you just have to document in detail how to use a particular package with Orca or Speakup etc. Again in the past this has also been fairly haphazard, but now that there is a specific repository for the Vinux Documentation Project this should become more coordinated, with individual users being asked to provide a guide to specific packages etc. Again we need someone to take responsibility for coordinating this, a 'Document Dictator' if you like...

Publicity - This means what it says on the can - making sure people find out about Vinux through mailing lists, forums, blogs and other websites etc, but without annoying everyone or being accused of spamming etc. The other important element to this role(s) is the need for realism. We can't make out that Vinux is the solution to everyone's computer needs - it offers advantages and disadvantages compared to other operating systems and we mustn't overblow our own trumpet as this will raise expectations, leading to inevitable disappointment for some users. Vinux isn't or probably won't ever be right for all VI computer users. So what we need is an 'Realist Reporter' to take on this role...

Mirrors - Providing mirrors on which to make Vinux available is of vital importance. Having mirrors around the world allows people to get Vinux from their nearest server, or at least provides options if one or other of the servers is down. We actually have a reasonable number of mirrors at the moment, but if you can host even one iso on server with reasonable bandwidth speeds (unlike mine) then drop us a line - we need more 'Mirror Mages'...

Website Management - This role(s) would require more technical competence than the previous two roles, as it would involve managing a website(s) and/or mailing lists etc making sure that all of the information is up to date and the iso images are available from the relevant mirrors. I would be happy to hand over this side of my responsibilities to other trusted members of the community as it would free me up to spend more time on the development side. So we need a 'Website Wizard' to step forward as well...

Package Development - There are already several people producing packages for Vinux and the wider Linux community, but this is an area were people can work relatively independently and produce packages which they think will be useful for themselves and others alike. The only communal element is uploading it to Launchpad, building the binaries and then providing technical support on the mailing list for users if required. If you have an idea for the next accessible application which will take the world by storm, then get coding. We need more 'Package Peasants'...

Distribution Development - This role probably involves the most responsibility and stress, but technically speaking it isn't as hard as you might first think. It requires a large amount of patience, determination, effort and time, but not that much intelligence - just a spattering of Bash scripting and a basic understanding of Ubuntu, the Gnome Desktop and the Accessibility software. So if you think you are a match for my determination and stupidity, then consider getting involved in this side of things. This is a role that can easily be split between different people, either taking turns to produce releases, or producing different versions of the same release. We need some 'Distribution Demons' as soon as possible...

Each if these roles could be taken on by a single individual or by a team of people, although each team would need a coordinator of some kind. So if you fancy playing a more active part in the development of Vinux please get in touch, privately if you prefer to discuss any concerns or anxieties you might have...

Now it's time to discuss the big issues which we have to face in the coming year:

The first issue is the proposed move from the Gnome Desktop to Unity in Ubuntu 11.04. This may or may not cause problems for screen-reader users. Luke Yelavich has been seconded onto the unity development team to make it accessible, which is a positive sign. But I feel Luke is always having to play catch up with decisions taken by Canonical in which accessibility isn't the highest priority. I suspect the motive behind switching to Unity is to give Ubuntu its own unique interface which will work well on netbooks and touchpads etc. So depending on how things develop we may have to adopt Unity and any limitations this has, or stay with the Gnome Desktop until Unity is usable.

Related to this is the question of whether we should stick with Ubuntu as the base for Vinux, switch to a different distro, or diversify and produce more than one version. Given the current lack of core developers, the third option seems unrealistic (unless some maverick decides to start producing their own version of Vinux) so that leaves us with the perennial 'Ubuntu or not' question. Ubuntu offers many advantages in terms of ease of use, hardware support and the size of the user community. On the other hand it has a very fast release cycle and I suspect it may have commercial motives in the long run and this may limit our freedom to release Vinux at some point in the future. There are other distros that offer similar features to Ubuntu e.g. Debian, Mint, Fedora etc, but they are also release based, meaning that the only safe way to upgrade is to install the latest version. On the other hand there are rolling release versions of Linux such as Arch, Aptosid and PCLinuxOS which can be kept permanently up to date without re-installation, but they are not easy to make accessible or remaster. The only viable option I could envisage using at the moment would be Mint Debian, which follows a rolling release based on Debian Testing, but also offers most of the features provided by Ubuntu, in addition to multimedia codecs etc.

Finally there is the issue of what features and packages we should and shouldn't include in Vinux. To some extent this is determined by the room on the iso image, but we could for example produce of lots of simple accessible tools using Zenity and Bash scripts (like Speedy-OCR) or plugins to existing applications (like Markup-Binder) that would make users live much easier - or should we encourage people to learn how to use the standard tools provided by Ubuntu or in the repositories?

Anyway this is just food for thought. Feel free to post your ideas and suggestions to the mailing list, we will have an online meeting sometime in the new year - probably towards the end of January when my student's examinations are all over!

Better Late Than Never!

I am pleased to announce that Vinux 3.1 (Based on Ubuntu 10.10) is finally ready for download from the Vinux mirrors! It is currently available as a CD or DVD in both 32 and 64bit versions (USB and Virtual versions will follow shortly). It has been a long time coming, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. On top of all the usual accessibility software, new features include a Quick Start Guide for beginners (Ctrl+Alt+Q), Autokey-GTK which can insert text automatically as you type based on pre-defined abbreviations, the Parcellite Clipboard Manager which allows you paste text from the clipboard history, X-Tile which allows you to tile windows automatically, Gnome Media Player as an accessible front-end to VLC, Conkeror a keyboard controlled Web Browser, Pidgin the Internet Messenger (with all the plugins) and Gufw a simple but effective Firewall Manager.

Other additions include: Alarm Clock, a simple GUI for setting timed notifications, GtkHash an md5sum calculator, SearchMonkey an advanced search tool, Terminator which allows you to open multiple tiled terminals in one window, Tux Commander a dual-paned file manager with keyboard shortcuts, World Clock which allows you to monitor times in different locations around the world, Gcolor2 a simple GUI for selecting colours from anywhere on the screen, the Specimen Font Previewer, Dlume a simple address book manager, the ToDo List package, mhWaveEdit a simple sound recorder/editor GUI, Sound Juicer an audio CD ripper, FSlint a file system cleaner, Gtk-ChTheme a GTK theme previewer/changer, Scheduled Tasks a simple GUI front-end for cron and HardInfo a system profiler and system benchmarker.

There are also three new packages unique to Vinux available from the Vinux repository and/or the EasyInstall-Office and OCR scripts. These are: Markup-Binder written by Isaac Porat, which makes the creation of complex navigable documents a simple process (the new QuickStart Guide was created using this), another application is Speedy-OCR written by Don Marang, which is a simple GUI front end which allows you to scan in documents and convert then to text and/or speech. And last but not least is Monitor-Toggle written by Luke Yelavich which allows you to turn off your monitor to save battery power and maintain your privacy.

There are also some changes under the hood. We unfortunately had to remove YASR from this release as it was no longer working under Maverick, and in order to make room on the CD we also had to remove Samba (Windows File-sharing) and the Festival Speech Synthesiser, although these can easily be reinstalled after installation. The dynamic font-size/colour-theme changing scripts have been revamped so that the desktop background and desktop icons change colour as well, and we have gone with a dark theme by default, with the window controls in the traditional top-right corner position. In addition there are now both desktop icons and menu launchers to take users straight to the Vinux website and the support/development groups.

Now for the bad news. I have already found a small bug in the latest release - however it is unlikely to affect the majority of users and there is a very simple workaround for those who are affected. Because of a minor typing error in one of the build scripts (I used a lowercase 'u' instead of an uppercase 'U' - I was tired!) the keybinding (Shift+Windows+Alt+Up) which was supposed to modify the multimedia keybindings in the event of the sound card being muted wasn't enabled. The workaround is simply to press Alt+F2, type 'volume_keys' (without the speech marks) then press Enter, then press Alt+Y and Enter again. Now you can use Windows+Alt+Right to unmute and raise the system volume. Of course, I also managed to provide completely the wrong keybindings for the new multimedia volume controls in the keybindings.txt file as well, just to confuse matters (I did mention I was tired didn't I?). So to clarify, once you have activated the new multimedia keybindings (should you need to) you should use Windows+Alt+Right/Left to raise/lower the volume and Windows+Alt+Down to mute/unmute the volume. My OCD Demon is now muttering away about the fact that I should remaster Vinux 3.1 to eliminate this stupid error, otherwise the world will probably end. On the other shoulder my Sanity Angel is reminding me that I really need a good rest and if this is the only bug it has I should count my blessings and rejoice!

To be continued...

Vinux: The Third Generation!

On behalf of the whole Vinux community I am happy to announce the 3rd release of Vinux - Linux for the Visually Impaired, based on Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid Lynx. This version of Vinux provides three screen-readers, two full-screen magnifiers, dynamic font-size/colour-theme changing as well as support for USB Braille displays. Vinux is now available both as an installable live CD and as a .deb package which will automatically convert an existing installation of Ubuntu Lucid into an accessible Vinux system! In addition, we now have our own Vinux package repository (from which you can install our customised packages with apt-get/synaptic) and a dedicated Vinux IRC channel. In the very near future we will also be launching a Vinux Wiki and releasing special DVD, USB and Virtual Editions of Vinux 3.0!

The Day After Tomorrow!

Unlike in the ecological disaster movie of the same title, the future for Vinux is looking very good! We are now approaching the release of the next version of Vinux, the third major release and there have been a whole host of bug fixes and new features included. The most significant change this time around is that the development is being led by Bill Cox instead of myself. This has been a positive move for two reasons: A. Bill's skills and knowledge of Bash Scripting, Gnome Accessibility and the inner workings of the Linux operating system far exceeds mine (I have never pretended to be anything other than an enthusiastic and dedicated amateur, who makes progress through trial and error - but mainly error!). And B. This means I have been able to sit on my fat arse and watch NCIS sometimes in the evenings instead of spending every waking moment hacking!

Bill has now sorted out most of the bugs that prevented us from using Ubuntu as the basis for Vinux in the 2nd series: i.e. the lack of responsiveness and stability when using Orca, and most of the problems which were caused when using packages which required root permissions. Bill has modified the PulseAudio sound server to run in system mode and channeled all of the speech software; Orca, Speakup and Yasr to use Speech-Dispatcher and Espeak, which provides a seamless user experience when shifting between the three screen-readers. He has also reintroduced Compiz magnification in addition to the Orca magnifier which was left out of the second series based on Debian. Apart from the improvements to the accessibility of Vinux, there are also some new features such as EasyInstall scripts - icons on the desktop and in the menus which allow a user to install suites of packages such as Open Office or the Non-Free Multimedia Codecs with one click! We are also toying with then idea of including the Pcmanfm file manager which offers a much more responsive performance than the default Nautilus file manager. This edition will also see the reintroduction of the core CLI applications and the customised Bash aliases that were introduced in the Vinux 2.1 CLI editions. Of course the main advantage of switching back to Ubuntu is the improved hardware compatibility it offers especially for wireless connectivity which was always a problem with the Debian based 2nd series. While Bill has done most of the hard work other members of the mailing list have of course helped and supported Bill by submitting scripts or ideas, testing the alpha and beta editions or just providing moral support. So thanks to everyone who has contributed, I am not going to mention individuals in case I miss someone out.

Apart from the forthcoming release itself there have also been other significant developments. We have now been offered several more mirrors to host Vinux Iso images on, and we plan to launch a new Vinux Wiki, Forum and IRC Chat channel alongside the release of Vinux 3.0 - so a special thanks to everyone involved in this process, taking on these responsibilities allows Bill and myself to concentrate on the development process. Perhaps the most significant development is the creation of a more mature Vinux Build Script and a Vinux package repository on Launchpad which allows anyone to turn a standard install of Ubuntu Lucid into a Vinux-like system. David Knight created the first Vinux build script, and this simplified the process somewhat, I then mutilated David's scripts to create the first CLI editions of Vinux, but Bill has taken this to a whole new level. Instead of being a single script with a few data files, Bill has created four separate scripts, three of which are used to turn an installed system into Vinux, the fourth to remaster the installed system and create a new Iso image. This means that nearly anyone can have a fully accessible system, without having to download and install Vinux, as long as they start with a default Ubuntu Lucid installation. The scripts are now hosted on SourceForge using Git so that other developers can get involved in the process. I managed to get the hang of it in a few hours (with a little coaching from Bill) so it can't be that hard - but you do have to know what you are doing if you don't want to destroy all of Bill's hard work!

Ubuntu will be releasing the 2nd Beta version of Lucid on Thursday and a Release Candidate on the 22nd April, The final release of Ubuntu 10.04 is planned for the 29th April and unless there are any unforeseen catastrophic bugs Vinux 3.0 should be released in the 1st week of May.

The Future's Bright - The Future's Orange!

Over the last few weeks Bill Cox has made significant progress on fixing the problems caused by PulseAudio in Ubuntu. Some of these fixes have actually been ported back into the development of Ubuntu and at the moment it looks like this will provide a very responsive and stable accessibility experience. Although it is not quite as snappy as Orca with Alsa on Debian, it is very close and Ubuntu of course offers much better hardware compatibility. Coupled with the fact that Remastersys doesn't yet support Squeeze and it is very likely that the final release of Squeeze may be delayed even further, it looks like we will initially be going with an Ubuntu-only version for Vinux 3.0! This will also provide a simpler installation process, a USB installer and WUBI support. I have spent the last few days working out how to built up the iso from scratch starting with the mini.iso, so that it contains all of the necessary files but still fits on a CD. If there are no nasty surprises ahead then this will become the first LTS version of Vinux with three years support and updates. Bill has also created a Vinux repository so we will be able to provide patches, updates and Vinux specific packages through synaptic and/or apt-get. There will also hopefully be a DVD sized 'Leviathan' edition which will contain lots of extra packages, but it may not be possible to provide a pure CLI version as the Ubuntu version of Remastersys requires a GUI to work. The main release will however come with speakup and a basic range of CLI applications pre-installed. So I would like to thank Bill for all of the hard work he has done, as well as everyone else who has contributed to the development process by submitting fixes, suggestions and/or feedback.

New Year's Resolution: 2010x365!

So what does the new year hold for Vinux? Well I have just started work on version 2.0 of the Vinux build script which will allow the user to create a CLI, GUI or HYB(rid) version of Vinux from a standard Debian installation. It will allow you to choose between nine pre-configured builds or create your own unique customised version. The pre-configured builds include CLI, GUI and HYB versions of the 'dna', 'std' and 'max' editions. The main release of Vinux will be based on the HYB 'std' version providing a basic range of both CLI and GUI applications. Obviously the 'max' edition of the GUI and HYB versions will be DVD sized images, the HYB version containing all of the required, recommended and additional packages in the Vinux suite. The next release will be Vinux 2.2, which will probably be the last version of Vinux based on Debian Lenny (5.03). Once Vinux 2.2 is released and any bugs fixed I plan to start working on the Debian Squeeze version (Vinux 3.0) using the same scripts which will provide better hardware support and new versions of Gnome, Orca and Open Office etc. There is a lot of work to do and I estimate it will take me at least a month to get the script into a state were I can start making test builds - I hope to have Vinux 2.2 out by Easter if possible.

However that is only part of the story. There are of course other members of the Vinux Development Group who are working on their own sub-projects. Bill Cox is now working on a version of Vinux based on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. He is trying to resolve the latency and stability issues caused by the PulseAudio sound system and seems to be making very good progress. This means that there will hopefully be two versions of Vinux 3.0 - a Debian based version and an Ubuntu based version which will provide users with a choice between stability and cutting edge packages/features. Mobeen will keep producing the VMWare virtual editions of Vinux, and is considering setting up his own website/hosting platform and a Vinux User Forum to differentiate between the needs of users and developers. David Ring will hopefully be producing USB versions of Vinux and possibly a special CLI version based on INX. Don Raikes is working on some scripts with dialog front-ends to ease the process of partitioning, formatting and imaging hard drives, as well as a Vinux installer and possibly a specialised forensics version of Vinux. I am also hoping that David Knight will be able to contribute to the Vinux build script again once his work and family responsibilities allow him to. I hope I haven't missed anything or anyone out!

Linux Distro Review 2009!

I have spent the last week trying out ten of the most popular Linux distros both as live CD's and as installed systems on both desktop and laptop computers. Here is a brief summary of my findings so far:

The distribution with the best accessibility out of the box was without doubt Adriane Knoppix 6.2 which is a special edition of Knoppix aimed at visually impaired users. It provides a simple menu driven console session by default using the espeak voices with the SBL console screenreader. This provides a choice of popular activities such as internet browsing, sending e-mails and file-management etc. If the user wants to use standard GUI tools then they can start an LXDE desktop session using Orca. You are then able to navigate the menus and use most of the GTK based applications and Compiz can be used as a screen magnifier if your video card supports 3D. However, if you know what you are doing Fedora, Open Solaris, OpenSuse and Ubuntu all offer Orca, Magnification and Braille support as long as you are able to enable and configure it yourself.

The best looking distribution was a close call between Fedora, Mandriva and Open Solaris, which all had very eye-catching, modern looking desktop and window colour schemes. I felt that Fedora 12 just pipped the others as everything just seemed to work together really well: the icons, window borders and the wallpaper etc. This is of course the most subjective judgement and isn't really of much interest to visually impaired users.

The best distribution for beginners is still Ubuntu 9.10, although Fedora, Mandriva and OpenSuse are all catching up very quickly. The killer feature is Ubuntu's hardware detection and compatibility which just seems to be able to handle any hardware I can throw at it. It also offers to download multimedia codecs for you if you try to play an unsupported format, which seems to be one of the hardest things for beginners to get their head around.

Puppy Linux 4.31 came top in three different categories: best live distribution, best performance on old computers and best distribution for netbooks. Puppy is a very small distro (about 100MB) that runs entirely in the ram. It provides a wide range of desktop tools and works on a wide range of hardware. As a live distribution it is much faster than any other distro, and it allows you to remove the CD once booted, which allows you to burn CD's or play DVD's etc. Puppy supports all popular multimedia formats out of the box and even plays commercial DVD's. Because it runs in the ram it is also excellent on old computers and netbooks where system resources are minimal. It supports most popular netbook models out of the box and is the only distro I would ever consider using on a netbook. If it was accessible it would also have been the best overall distribution and my favourite distribution.

The distribution which wins the title of worst all-round distribution is GnuSense 2.3 , although this is primarily because it only includes open-source software that is free in the strictest sense of the word. This means that you get very few hardware drivers and no restricted multimedia codecs either installed or provided in the repositories. While this may be the purest distribution around it means in practise there will be many things you cannot do without a lot of fiddling.

OpenSuse 11.2 takes the title for best distribution for power-users and best all-round distribution. Without doubt this distribution has the best selection of tools installed by default, very good accessibility support once installed and configured and its most impressive feature is it compatibility with Microsoft networks which would make it the only choice for someone wanting to integrate fully with a Windows network. OpenSuse has come on a long way since last time I tried it and it would have also been my personal favourite but for one feature it doesn't currently offer.

So my personal favourite (as a sighted user) is Ubuntu 9.10! It provides a very easy to use system, a good selection of desktop packages out of the box and of course excellent hardware detection and support. However it does not provide the number of tool and packages that OpenSuse provides by default and the single feature that makes it my favourite over OpenSuse is that you can easily remaster Ubuntu using the Ubuntu Customisation Kit or Remastersys, while OpenSuse only offers an online distribution build service which you are not allowed to distribute without removing all the logos etc. For me, being able to remaster a distribution, either for your own use or for public distribution is absolutely essential. This is because I don't want to have to install a system on multiple computers and have to configure them each manually, and it is the easiest and most efficient way to create a new distro. If you don't want to do this i would strongly suggest you consider using OpenSuse 11.2!

I haven't compared these distribution to Vinux or Debian, because I don't want to be accused of bias, but if anyone would like compare what Vinux and/or Debian have to offer then please post your reviews to the mailing list.

Last minute addition!

I have just had a look at the latest Linux Mint 8.0 which is based on Ubuntu 9.10 - obviously it uses pulseaudio and has the same kind of problems as Ubuntu 9.10 as regards accessibility - although I am planning to do an experiment and see if remastering from the live CD with pulseaudio disabled allows me to make a remaster which uses alsa by default. I will let everyone know if this works - or whether this causes other problems - the only problem I have noticed so far is the master volume control doesn't work - but alsamixer does anyway. Apart from that Linux Mint has two distinct advantages over Ubuntu - firstly it comes with all of the restricted codecs installed by default so mp3, flash and wma files etc should just play (I don't think it will play encrypted DVD's) and secondly its cool minty theme of black and green just looks so good it makes a mac look plain! So if you want to recommend Linux to any sighted friends or relatives I would recommend Linux Mint 8.0 as a real showcase for linux - the hardware just works, you can play all your existing multimedia files and it looks amazing! I have just installed it on a machine at work with a dual monitor setup and everything just worked out of the box and it just looks so cool.

To be or not to be?

On the 28th November Vinux will be one year old! We have made it through the most difficult period as many projects fail within the first 3 to 6 months. I think we have made reasonable progress in this time although there is still a long way to go before we have a stable, easy to use product. However, as always I like to evaluate everything I do and try to identify strengths and weaknesses, in order to improve things. The first few releases of Vinux (Vibuntu) were very easy to install and configure, but the speech was unstable and unresponsive. When we moved to Debian the stablility and responsiveness of the speech improved but at the cost of less hardware compatibility and a more complex installation process. More recently the release of a CLI editon brought even more stability and responsiveness in the form of speakup, although this was aimed more at intermediate and advanced users. I am hoping that the switch to Debian live-helper from remastersys will bring us improvements to the installation process and the performance of the live CD in the near future. So for me this is a time to step back from the development process and try to get an overview of what we have achieved and where we are going.

The first question has to be is there really a need for Vinux, and if so how well does Vinux meet those needs in comparison with other solutions? So do we really need a distribution aimed at visually impaired users, or should we be encouraging the big developers to make their distributions accessible to all? I personally think that it would be better for everyone if the big distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse did take the accessibility issues more seriously, but the reality is that like their commercial counterparts their main market is the sighted mainsteam user. So at least in the short term it seems a Vinux type distribution is required especially for new users. I suspect when and if Linux gets into the education system, then they will be forced to cater for students with a variety of disabilities and the support contracts will make it worth their while to meet these needs. Of course the strongest argument for an open source solution is the extortionate price of accessibility software for a group who are generally economically disadvantaged, even more so in the third world.

So assuming that a specialist open source distribution is needed at least in the short term, then how does Vinux compare with other solutions. Well there aren't really many distributions that are targeted at VI users, the only active project that springs to mind is Adrianne Knoppix, the Oralux project was abandoned although there are one or two localised distributions for example 'Blindbuntu' which is a Czech language distribution. However Adrianne Knoppix takes a very different approach to Vinux. The last time I checked it provided a menu driven console interface, a little bit like INX and GRML. This provides a series of choices for sending e-mails, editing text or surfing the internet. In fact I think the LinuxSpeaks project takes a similar approach. I have tried to avoid this approach with the CLI edition because although I want it to be as easy as possible to use, I want users to learn to use the console by typing commands and navigating ncurses interfaces etc, Similarly in the GUI edition I want everything to work out of the box, but I want the user to learn how to use Linux in the process. Once they are confident with how Vinux works, ideally they should be able to move onto any Gnome based distribution and configure it to their tastes. So I expect Vinux users to be tourists who will use Vinux to get their feet wet, and open the doors to the wider Linux world.

So now comes the difficult question: Just how many people have tried Vinux and how many people are actually using it? It seems that quite a lot of people have tried Vinux if the web statistics are to be believed. There have been approaching 4000 downloads of Vinux through the Softpedia portal and several thousand through the officail website. However many of these downloads will be the same people downloading the new versions as they are released. So for the sake of argument let's say that at least 1000 people have tried Vinux. Of those many, say 50% will find it too difficult to use and go back to Windows. Lets say another 25% manage to get it working but wouldn't consider installing it to their hard drive, but maybe use it as a live CD or USB recovery stick etc occasionally. Of the remaining 25% I imagine half of them (12.5%) tried to install it but ran into problems of some sort - either difficultly partitioning the drive(s) or hardware incompatibility e.g. unsupported wifi chipset.

This leaves us with 12.5% who might have been able to install it to their computers without any difficultly or hardware problems. Of which I imagine at least half would only see it as a backup system or novelty learning tool, not a primary working system. So there may be 6.25% who do consider Vinux to be a serious working as an alternate or additional tool, of which maybe a fifth may actually ditch Windows and use Vinux and/or Linux as their primary operating system, in other words about 1.25% of the original estimated 1000 users: Twelve and a half people in the world actually using Vinux as their main OS. (This only makes sense of course if we assume one of these users is either a midget or extremely fat). Ironically I am both short and fat, so perhaps that accounts for the mathematical anomaly. Which only leaves eleven.

So based on those purely theoretical and fairly conservative estimates is it worth while me putting in all of the energy and time it takes to make Vinux? Sometimes I feel like I am doing this for an imaginary audience, and no one is really interested in Vinux or Linux for that matter. In the UK and the USA it seems that Microsoft rules supreme and no-one outside of a Star Trek convention has ever heard of Linux let alone tried it. I also get frustrated at my own lack of knowledge and skills: I am self-taught, as you can probably tell and make progress by just trying things and seeing if they work. More often that not it doesn't but when it does I get a great sense of achievement. However, because of my lack of knowledge I can't solve the really big problems like the stability of speech-dispatcher or the inaccessibility of some applications etc. So sometimes I get very frustrated when I just can't seem to make any progress. It is at times like this that I sometimes question why I am doing this. My life would be a lot simpler and more relaxing if I didn't make Vinux. I could just use whichever distro I fancied, or make my own customised distro for myself, or even a mainstream distribution for sighted users - that would be so easy to do, because putting together a distribution without having to take account of accessibility would be a walk in the park! On the other hand then it would just be another distribution amongst many and there is no reason why mine would be any more attractive than anyone elses. Of course I could get really lazy and just use a distro out of the box, install what ever applications I wanted and configure it and leave it at that, but I do like to twiddle, and it was frustration at having to reconfigure a system everytime you upgraded or tried a new distribution that got me into making remasters in the first place. The first remaster ever made was a bumper edition of Ubuntu using the Ubuntu Customisation Kit, and the first one I released to the public was DingoPlus, a version of Puppy Linux 4.0 modified for use on the Asus Eeepc 701 - which I am still using today!

So it is over to you - how many people are actually using Vinux as a serious operating system? Am I wasting my time? Do we really need Vinux? What is the best alternative currently? How does Vinux compare to Windows and Mac? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life and was there a third shooter on the grassy knoll? I am planning to have a break from Vinux development this weekend and have a play with lots of different distributions and then write a review of their pros and cons from both a sighted and VI perspective. A penny for your thoughts!

Debian Live Helper v Remastersys!

I have spent this weekend trying out the Debian live-helper package this weekend. It is the official package for creating Debian live CD's and is used to produce all of the different versions: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Lxde and several CLI versions. It can provide a standard Debian installer or a Live CD installer which copies the live system to the hard drive. This tool provides a lot of options not available with remastersys such as a choice of syslinux or grub (on the CD), several pre-defined package lists for a Gnome desktop or KDE desktop etc. It allows you to pretty much change any aspect of the Live CD. The one thing is does not allow you to do easily is to change the user settings, to provide accessibility out of the box. In order to do this you have to boot the iso, make the changes manually and then copy the user area to /etc/skel, which is what I already have to do with remastersys. So in this sense there is no advantage over remastersys, as the changes either have to be done manually or by a script anyway. So on the one hand the Debian Live helper offers a lot more options than remastersys, but still requires a manual configuration. So the easy option would be to stick with remastersys because the script is already well developed and relatively simple to use. However in the long run, once the config files are created for Debian Live Helper it would become a lot easier to use and offer many improvements in functionality etc. This is a tough one! On the one hand I really want to go with the simplest option, but if I could get the Debian Live Helper configuration sorted out this would give a more powerful and sustainable solution. Maybe I will persevere with Live Helper for a few more days and see if I can get the user settings sorted out...

Vinux 2.1 Leviathan Edition!

I am happy to announce the release of Vinux 2.1 Leviathan! This is a monstrous hybrid of the Vinux CLI max edition, the standard GUI edition and a wide range of additional applications including Open Office 3.0, the Evolution mail client, the Inkscape vector graphics package, the Scribus desktop publishing tools, the Bluefish webpage editor, the Gambas 2 IDE as well as much more. Obviously not all of these extra tools are accessible to speech/braille users, but partially sighted users can access them with the screen magnifier. This is a very large iso (1.7GB) so you will need a reasonably fast broadband connection to download it. The URL's are:

http://vinux.org.uk/iso/Vinux-GUI-leviathan-2.1.iso
http://vinux.org.uk/iso/Vinux-GUI-leviathan-2.1.iso.md5.txt

I didn't originally intend to release this for public use, it started out as an attempt to create a personalised version of Vinux for my own use. Then as it came together I began to think that other people may want to use it as well! I created it using a hastily modified version of the CLI build script which starts with the standard 2.0 GUI version, adds all of the CLI tools and utilities included in the CLI 'max' version and well as a large number of useful GUI applications that I use on a regular basis. I then had to do a little manual configuration before remastering it to DVD. It turned out to be an interesting little project that I managed to complete in one weekend. Now the hard bit - merging the CLI and GUI build scripts so that it is possible to make either version or even a hybrid GUI/CLI edition using the same script...

Vinux 2.0 CLI Edition Categorised Package List!

This document contain a categorised list of packages included in the Vinux 2.0 CLI Edition. There are nine main categories and thirty eight sub-categories containing five hundred and sixty eight packages in total. This is not an exhaustive list: there are one thousand three hundred and seventy nine packages on the disk in total, five hundred of which are library files. The packages listed here are the command line applications which perform common desktop functions.

1. Console Tools

a. Accessibility

brltty Access software for a blind person using a braille display
espeak A multi-lingual software speech synthesizer
gtypist A simple ncurses touch typing tutor
speakup-modules-2.6.26-2-686 speakup modules for Linux
speakup-source Source of the speakup kernel modules

b. Screen Utilities

away A terminal locking program
conspy Remote control of Linux virtual consoles
dvtm Tiling window management for the console
fbgrab Framebuffer grabber
screenie a small and lightweight GNU screen(1) wrapper
screen terminal multiplexor with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation
scrot command line screen capture utility
splitvt run two programs in a split screen
ttyrec Terminal interaction recorder and player (for tty)
vlock Virtual Console locking program
xvfb Virtual Framebuffer fake' X server

c. Shells

bash The GNU Bourne Again SHell
dash POSIX-compliant shell
ksh The real, AT&T version of the Korn shell
python An interactive high-level object-oriented language
sash Stand-alone shell
zsh A shell with lots of features

2. Editors

a. Emacs

apel portable library for emacsen
artist Emacs Lisp drawing package
dictem Dict client for emacs
edb database program for GNU Emacs
elscreen Screen for Emacsen
emacs-goodies-el Miscellaneous add-ons for Emacs
emacs The GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
emms The Emacs MultiMedia System
erc an IRC client for Emacs
nethack-el Emacs major-mode for playing NetHack

b. Misc Editors

aee An easy to use screen-based editor
diakonos Customizable, usable console-based text editor
e3 A very small editor
ed The classic unix line editor
elvis-console powerful clone of the vi/ex text editor (without X11 support)
hexcurse A ncurses-based hex editor with many features
hnb hierarchical notebook
info Standalone GNU Info documentation browser
jed editor for programmers (textmode version)
joe user friendly full screen text editor
less Pager program similar to more
lv Powerful Multilingual File Viewer
most Pager program similar to more and less
nano free Pico clone with some new features
ne Nice Editor, an easy-to-use and powerful editor
tweak an efficient hex editor
vile VI Like Emacs - vi work-alike
wordgrinder a simple word processor that runs in a terminal
zile very small Emacs-subset editor

c. Vim

vim-addon-manager manager of addons for the Vim editor
vim-scripts plugins for vim, adding bells and whistles
vim-tiny Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version
vim Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor

3. Entertainment

a. Audio

abcde A Better CD Encoder
alsaplayer-text PCM player designed for ALSA (text version)
beep advanced pc-speaker beeper
bplay Buffered audio file player/recorder
cdda2wav Dummy transition package for icedax
cdparanoia audio extraction tool for sampling CDs
cmus lightweight ncurses audio player
cplay A front-end for various audio players
cutmp3 a small and fast command line MP3 editor
cw Command-line frontend to unixcw
cwcp Ncurses frontend to unixcw
flac Free Lossless Audio Codec - command line tools
icedax Creates WAV files from audio CDs
id3ed Another id3 tag v1 editor
id3v2 A command line id3v2 tag editor
madplay MPEG audio player in fixed point
morse Morse Classic' is a morse-code training program
mp3blaster Full-screen console mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player
mp3c MP3Creator - Creator for MP3/OGG-files
mp3rename Rename mp3 files based on id3tags
mp3report Script to create an HTML report of MP3 files in a directory
mp3splt Splits MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files without reencoding
mp3val A program for MPEG audio stream validation
mp3wrap Utility for MP3 wrapping (rolling multiple MP3s into one)
mpg123 MPEG layer 37653 audio player
mpg321 mpg123 clone that doesn't use floating point
normalize-audio adjusts the volume of WAV, MP3 and OGG files
pmidi A command line midi player for ALSA
vlc-nox multimedia player and streamer (without X support)
vorbis-tools several Ogg Vorbis tools
yatm Command line audio file player with time stretching capabilities

b. Games

angband A single-player, text-based, dungeon simulation game.
asciijump Small and funny ASCII-art game about ski jumping
bsdgames a collection of classic textual unix games
bsdgames-nonfree rogue, the classic dungeon exploration game
crawl Dungeon Crawl, a text-based roguelike game
dosemu The Linux DOS Emulator
empire the war game of the century
fortune-mod provides fortune cookies on demand
freesweep text-based minesweeper
frotz interpreter of Z-code story-files
megahal conversation simulator that can learn as you talk to it
nethack-console Text-based overhead view D&D-style adventure game
nethack-spoilers Spoiler files for the Nethack adventure game
ninvaders A space invaders-like game using ncurses
omega-rpg A text-based roguelike game
sillypoker A poker game
slashem A variant of Nethack
sudoku console based sudoku
tome A single-player, text-based, dungeon simulation game.
zangband A single-player, text-based, roguelike game

c. Graphics

aewan ASCII-art Editor Without A Name
aview A high quality ASCII art image viewer and video player
bb ASCII-art demo based on AAlib
boxes Textmode box- and comment drawing filter
caca-utils text mode graphics utilities
cadubi Creative ASCII Drawing Utility By Ian
cmatrix simulates the display from "The Matrix"
cowsay A configurable talking cow
dialog Displays user-friendly dialog boxes from shell scripts
figlet Frank, Ian & Glenn's Letters
francine feature rich ansi console login engine
grc generic colouriser for everything
linuxlogo Color ANSI System Logo
tetradraw ANSI drawing and viewing utility
textdraw Tool to draw/modify/move geometric figures & text for ASCII art
ticker configurable text scroller
toilet display large colourful characters in text mode
toilet-fonts collection of TOIlet fonts
tpp text presentation program
welcome2l Linux ANSI boot logo
whiptail Displays user-friendly dialog boxes from shell scripts

4. Files

a. Archiving Tools

atool A tool for managing file archives of various types
bzip2 high-quality block-sorting file compressor - utilities
cabextract a program to extract Microsoft Cabinet files
cpio GNU cpio -- a program to manage archives of files
gzip The GNU compression utility
gzrt gzip recovery toolkit
lzma Compression method of 7z format in 7-Zip program
lzop fast compression program
makeself utility to generate self-extractable archives
mscompress Microsoft compress.exe/expand.exe compatible compressor
ncompress Original Lempel-Ziv compress/uncompress programs
p7zip-full 7z and 7za file archivers with high compression ratio
p7zip-rar non-free rar module for p7zip
pbzip2 parallel bzip2 implementation
rar Archiver for .rar files
rzip compression program for large files
tar GNU version of the tar archiving utility
unp unpack (almost) everything with one command
unrar Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version)
unzip De-archiver for .zip files
zip Archiver for .zip files

b. Backup Utilities

backup-manager command-line backup tool
hdup Filesystem duplicator and backup
multicd Backup your data to CD-R/CD-RW
storebackup fancy compressing managing checksumming hard-linking cp
uswsusp tools to use userspace software suspend provided by Linux

c. Burning Tools

cd5 Compute checksum of individual track on CD-ROMS
cdck verifies the quality of written CDs/DVDs
cdrdao records CDs in Disk-At-Once (DAO) mode
cdrecord Dummy transition package for wodim
cdrskin command line CD/DVD writing tool
cdw Tool for burning CD's - console version
dvdrtools DVD writing program
dvd+rw-tools DVD+-RW/R tools
genisoimage Creates ISO-9660 CD-ROM filesystem images
mkisofs Dummy transition package for genisoimage
mp3roaster A Perl hack for burning audio CDs out of MP3/OGG/FLAC/WAV
mybashburn Burn data and create songs with interactive dialog box
pcopy multithreaded (raw) disk copying program
wodim command line CD/DVD writing tool

d. Conversion Tools

a2ps GNU a2ps - Anything to PostScript' converter and pretty-printer
abiword efficient, featureful word processor with collaboration
antiword Converts MS Word files to text and ps
ascii2binary Convert between ASCII, hexadecimal and binary files
atp text to PostScript converter with some C syntax highlighting
catdoc MS-Word to TeX or plain text converter
clit Decompiler for Microsoft's .lit ebook format
e2ps Convert plain text into PostScript
gnome-u2ps tool to convert UTF-8 text to PostScript
gnumeric spreadsheet application for GNOME - main program
halibut yet another free document preparation system
html2ps HTML to PostScript converter
html2text advanced HTML to text converter
mtools Tools for manipulating MSDOS files
netpbm Graphics conversion tools
odt2txt simple converter from OpenDocument Text to plain text
pdf2svg converts PDF documents to SVG files (one per page)
poppler-utils PDF utilitites (based on libpoppler)
pstotext Extract text from PostScript and PDF files
recode Character set conversion utility
tofrodos Converts DOS <-> Unix text files, alias tofromdos
txt2html Text to HTML converter
unhtml Remove the markup tags from an HTML file
uni2ascii UTF-8 to 7-bit ASCII and vice versa converter
units converts between different systems of units
wp2x WordPerfect 5.6712962962963e-05 documents to whatever converter
wv Programs for accessing Microsoft Word documents

e. File Management

cdargs bookmarks and browsing for the cd command
chase Follow a symlink and print out its target file
clex command line file manager which uses the ncurses library
cruft Find any cruft built up on your system
detox utility to replace problematic characters in filenames
diff File comparison utilities
docdiff Compares two files word by word / char by char
dog Enhanced replacement for cat
fdupes identifies duplicate files within given directories
fhist File history, comparison and merge utilities
file Determines file type using magic numbers
lfm a simple but powerful file manager for the UNIX console
limo lists files in a custom way
lsof List open files
makedev creates device files in /dev
mc midnight commander - a powerful file manager
mktemp tool for creating temporary files
mrename A tool for easy and automatic renaming of many files
ncdt Display directory tree
pdmenu simple console menu program
pilot Simple file browser from Alpine, a text-based email client
safe-rm wrapper around the rm command to prevent accidental deletions
sed The GNU sed stream editor
ssed The super sed stream editor
symlinks scan/change symbolic links
trash-cli command line trashcan utility
tree displays directory tree, in color
vfu A versatile text-based filemanager
vifm a ncurses based file manager with vi like keybindings
wcd saves time typing when you want to change directories
wdiff Compares two files word by word
ytree A file manager for terminals

f. Package Management

alien convert and install rpm and other packages
apt Advanced front-end for dpkg
apt-dpkg-ref APT, Dpkg Quick Reference sheet
aptitude terminal-based package manager
apt-utils APT utility programs
configure-debian configuration program for packages using debconf
dctrl-tools Command-line tools to process Debian package information
debconf Debian configuration management system
deborphan program that can find unused packages, e.g. libraries
debsums verification of installed package files against MD5 checksums
diffstat produces graph of changes introduced by a diff file
dlocate fast alternative to dpkg -L and dpkg -S
dpatch patch maintenance system for Debian source packages
dpkg-awk Gawk script to parse /var/lib/dpkg/{status,available}
dpkg Debian package management system
dpkg-dev Debian package development tools
dpkg-ftp Ftp method for dselect
dpkg-multicd Installation methods for multiple binary CDs
dpkg-repack puts an unpacked .deb file back together
dselect Debian package management front-end
patch Apply a diff file to an original
patchutils Utilities to work with patches
popularity-contest Vote for your favourite packages automatically
reportbug reports bugs in the Debian distribution
reprepro Debian package repository producer
rpm2html Generate HTML index from directories of RPMs
rpm Red Hat package manager
smxi advanced update, upgrade and installation manager
subversion Advanced version control system
tasksel Tool for selecting tasks for installation on Debian systems
ucf Update Configuration File: preserve user changes to config files
vrms virtual Richard M. Stallman
wajig simplified Debian package management front end

g. Remastering and Installation Tools

cdebootstrap Bootstrap a Debian system
debian-cd Tools for building (Official) Debian CD set
debootstrap Bootstrap a basic Debian system
dfsbuild Build Debian From Scratch CD/DVD images
remastersys Debian system remaster
remastersys-installer install live CD to disk
simple-cdd create custom debian-installer CDs

h. Search Utilities

agrep text search tool with support for approximate patterns
findutils utilities for finding files--find, xargs
gawk GNU awk, a pattern scanning and processing language
grep GNU grep, egrep and fgrep
locate maintain and query an index of a directory tree
lookup interactive utility to search text files quickly
mawk a pattern scanning and text processing language
mlocate quickly find files on the filesystem based on their name
rpl intelligent recursive search/replace utility
sfind improved version of the find utility
sgrep tool to search a file for structured pattern
strigi-utils command-line tools for Strigi Desktop Search
whichman Fault tolerant search utilities: whichman, ftff, ftwhich

5. Hardware

a. Ethernet Drivers

atl2-modules-2.6.26-2-686 Atheros L2 Ethernet Adapter driver for Linux
atl2-source Linux Base Driver for the Atheros(R) L2 Fast Ethernet Adapter
bcm5700-source module source for Broadcom's bcm5700 ethernet driver
et131x-modules-2.6.26-2-686 et131x Ethernet Adapter driver for Linux
et131x-source Source for et131x Ethernet Controller driver from Agere

b. Misc Tools

acpitool command line ACPI client
cpufrequtils utilities to deal with the cpufreq Linux kernel feature
cpulimit limits the cpu usage of a process
discover hardware identification system
eject ejects CDs and operates CD-Changers under Linux
gpm General Purpose Mouse interface
hdparm tune hard disk parameters for high performance
hibernate smartly puts your computer to sleep (suspend to RAM or disk)
hwdata hardware identification / configuration data
joystick set of testing and calibration tools for joysticks
lm-sensors utilities to read temperature/voltage/fan sensors
lshw information about hardware configuration
memtest86 thorough real-mode memory tester
memtest86+ thorough real-mode memory tester
nvclock Allows you to overclock your nVidia card under GNU/Linux
pciutils Linux PCI Utilities
pm-utils utilities and scripts for power management
sdparm Output and modify SCSI device parameters
sensord hardware sensor information logging daemon
setcd Control the behaviour of your cdrom device
tpconfig configure touchpad devices
x86info Display diagnostic information about i386 compatible CPUs

c. Laptop Utilities

laptop-detect attempt to detect a laptop
laptop-mode-tools Scripts to spin down hard drive and save power
laptop-net Automatically adapt laptop Ethernet
powertop Linux tool to find out what is using power on a laptop
radeontool utility to control ATI Radeon backlight functions on laptops
spicctrl Sony Vaio controller program to set LCD backlight brightness
toshset Access much of the Toshiba laptop hardware interface
whereami Automatically reconfigure your (laptop) system for a new location

d. Partitioning Tools

cramfsprogs Tools for CramFs (Compressed ROM File System)
disktype detection of content format of a disk or disk image
dosfstools utilities for making and checking MS-DOS FAT filesystems
e2fsprogs ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utilities
e2tools utilities for manipulating files in an ext2/ext3 filesystem
fatresize FAT16/FAT32 filesystem resizer
fatsort utility for sorting FAT directory structures
gnu-fdisk Linux fdisk replacement based on libparted
gpart Guess PC disk partition table, find lost partitions
hfsplus Tools to access HFS+ formatted volumes
hfsprogs mkfs and fsck for HFS and HFS+ file systems
hfsutils Tools for reading and writing Macintosh volumes
mountpy script for quick mounting of removable devices
mount Tools for mounting and manipulating filesystems
ntfs-3g read-write NTFS driver for FUSE
ntfsprogs tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux
os-prober utility to detect other OSes on a set of drives
parted The GNU Parted disk partition resizing program
partimage backup partitions into a compressed image file
reiserfsprogs User-level tools for ReiserFS filesystems
sdd File duplication and conversion tool, similar to dd'
sformat SCSI disk format and repair tool

c. Printer Utilities

cups Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - server
djtools Tools for HP DeskJet printer
ink tool for checking the ink level of your local printer
lpr BSD lpr/lpd line printer spooling system
mpage print multiple pages per sheet on PostScript printer
pconf-detect Small printer auto-detect command-line tool
poster Create large posters out of PostScript pages
psutils A collection of PostScript document handling utilities
system-config-printer graphical interface to configure the printing system

d. Wireless Drivers

acerhk-source Source for the acerhk driver
acx100-source ACX100/ACX111 wireless network drivers source
atmel-firmware Firmware for Atmel at76c50x wireless networking chips.
firmware-bnx2 Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtremeII
firmware-bnx2x Binary firmware for Broadcom NetXtremeII 10Gb
firmware-ipw2x00 Binary firmware for Intel Pro Wireless 2100, 2200 + 2915
firmware-iwlwifi Binary firmware for Intel Wireless 3945 and 4965
firmware-linux Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel
firmware-ralink Binary firmware for Ralink RT2561, RT2571, RT2661/71
linux-wlan-ng-firmware firmware files used by the linux-wlan-ng driver
linux-wlan-ng-source linux-wlan-ng driver
linux-wlan-ng utilities for wireless prism2 cards
madwifi-source source for the Multiband Atheros Driver for WiFi
madwifi-tools tools for the Multiband Atheros Driver for WiFi
rt2400-source source for rt2400 wireless network driver
rt2500-source source for rt2500 wireless network driver
rt2570-source source for rt2570 wireless network driver
rt73-common RT73(RT2571W) Wireless Lan Linux Driver - common files
rt73-modules-2.6.26-2-686 Driver for Ralink RT73 wireless network card
rt73-source RT73(RT2571W) Wireless Lan Linux Driver - kernel module
wpasupplicant Client support for WPA and WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i)

6. Information

a. Database Utilities

gadfly Server and interactive shell for Gadfly SQL database
nosql a Relational Database Management System for Unix
sqlite command line interface for SQLite

b. Dictionaries and Thesaurusi

aiksaurus an English-language thesaurus (utility)
aspell-en English dictionary for GNU Aspell
aspell GNU Aspell spell-checker
dictd Dictionary Server
dict-devil The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
dict Dictionary Client
dict-elements Data regarding the Elements
dictfmt Utility to format a file for use by the dictd server
dict-foldoc FOLDOC dictionary database
dict-gcide A Comprehensive English Dictionary
dict-jargon Jargon File 38081
dict-vera Dictionary of computer related acronyms -- dict format
dict-wn electronic lexical database of English language for dict
iamerican An American English dictionary for ispell
ibritish A British English dictionary for ispell
ispell International Ispell (an interactive spelling corrector)
link-grammar-dictionaries-en Carnegie Mellon University's link grammar
myspell-en-us English_american dictionary for myspell
vera Dictionary of computer related acronyms -- info format
wamerican American English dictionary words for /usr/share/dict
wbritish British English dictionary words for /usr/share/dict

c. Documentation

abs-guide The Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
anarchism An exhaustive exploration of Anarchist theory and practice
angband-doc Documentation for the roguelike game Angband.
aptitude-doc-en English manual for aptitude, a package manager
ascii interactive ASCII name and synonym chart
asr-manpages alt.sysadmin.recovery manual pages
backup-manager-doc documentation package for Backup Manager
bash-doc Documentation and examples for The GNU Bourne Again SHell
cfi-en Copyright does not exist, book about hacker culture
clamav-docs anti-virus utility for Unix - documentation
debconf-doc debconf documentation
debian-faq The Debian FAQ
debian-history A Short History of the Debian Project
debian-reference-en Debian system administration guide, English original
doc-debian Debian Project documentation and other documents
doc-linux-nonfree-text Linux HOWTOs in ASCII format (non-free)
doc-linux-text Linux HOWTOs and FAQs in ASCII format
elinks-doc advanced text-mode WWW browser - documentation
fortunes-debian-hints Debian Hints for fortune
funny-manpages more funny manpages
jargon-text The definitive compendium of hacker slang
jargon the definitive compendium of hacker slang
linux-wlan-ng-doc documentation for wlan-ng
man-db on-line manual pager
manpages Manual pages about using a GNU/Linux system
miscfiles Dictionaries and other interesting files
newbiedoc Debian for newbies by newbies (and not-so-newbies)
parted-doc The GNU Parted disk partition resizing program documentation
partimage-doc Partition Image User Documentation
perl-doc Perl documentation
rutebook Linux: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition, an online book
speakup-doc Documentation for speakup kernel modules
sysadmin-guide The Linux System Administrators' Guide
tar-doc documentation for the tar package
vim-doc Vi IMproved - HTML documentation
zsh-doc zsh documentation - info/HTML format

d. Maths Utilities

bc The GNU bc arbitrary precision calculator language
concalc console calculator
dc The GNU dc arbitrary precision reverse-polish calculator
sc Text-based spreadsheet with VI-like keybindings
wcalc A flexible command-line scientific calculator

e. Monitoring Tools

atop Monitor for system resources and process activity
atsar system activity reporter
di advanced df like disk information utility
discus pretty version of df(1) command
fam File Alteration Monitor
gt5 shell program to display visual disk usage with navigation
hddtemp hard drive temperature monitoring utility
htop interactive processes viewer
iftop displays bandwidth usage information on an network interface
iotop simple top-like I/O monitor
iptraf Interactive Colorful IP LAN Monitor
linuxinfo Displays extended system information
memstat Identify what's using up virtual memory
ncdu ncurses disk usage viewer
nload A realtime console network usage monitor
procinfo Displays system information from /proc
pydf colourised df(1)-clone
time The GNU time program for measuring cpu resource usage
xtail like "tail -f" but works on truncated files, directories, more
yacpi ncurses based acpi monitor for text mode

7. Internet

a. Browsers

elinks advanced text-mode WWW browser
links Web browser running in text mode
lynx-cur Text-mode WWW Browser with NLS support (development version)
lynx Text-mode WWW Browser (transitional package)
netrik text mode WWW browser with vi like keybindings
newsbeuter text mode rss feed reader with podcast support
nrss A ncurses-based RSS reader
snownews Text mode RSS newsreader
urlview Extracts URLs from text
w3m WWW browsable pager with excellent tables/frames support

b. Chat

finch text-based multi-protocol instant messaging client
irssi terminal based IRC client
linphone-nox SIP softphone - console-only client
naim A console client for AOL Instant Messenger and IRC
weechat-curses Fast, light and extensible IRC client

c. Download Managers

aria2 High speed download utility
axel light download accelerator - console version
bittorrent Original BitTorent client - console tools
clive Video extraction utility for YouTube, Google Video and other videos
ctorrent BitTorrent Client written in C++
curl Get a file from an HTTP, HTTPS or FTP server
ftp The FTP client
hpodder Tool to scan and download podcasts (podcatcher)
ncftp A user-friendly and well-featured FTP client
podracer podcast aggregator/downloader
rtorrent ncurses BitTorrent client based on LibTorrent
wget retrieves files from the web

d. E-Mail

alpine Text-based email client, friendly for novices but powerful
bsd-mailx A simple mail user agent
cone COnsole Newsreader and Emailer
elmo text-based mail-reader supporting SMTP and POP3
mutt text-based mailreader supporting MIME, GPG, PGP and threading
procmail Versatile e-mail processor

e. Network Tools

bluez-utils Bluetooth tools and daemons
cnetworkmanager command line interface for network manager
giftcurs text-based interface to the giFT file-sharing system
hostname utility to set/show the host name or domain name
ifupdown high level tools to configure network interfaces
iproute networking and traffic control tools
netcat-traditional TCP/IP swiss army knife
network-manager network management framework daemon
openbsd-inetd The OpenBSD Internet Superserver
openssh-client secure shell client, an rlogin/rsh/rcp replacement
openssh-server secure shell server, an rshd replacement
rsync fast remote file copy program (like rcp)
samba a LanManager-like file and printer server for Unix
smbclient a LanManager-like simple client for Unix
smbc samba-commander - curses based samba network browser
ssh secure shell client and server (metapackage)
telnet The telnet client
traceroute Traces the route taken by packets over an IPv4/IPv6 network
vpnc Cisco-compatible VPN client
whois an intelligent whois client
wireless-tools Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions

8. Security

a. Forensic and Recovery Tool

autopsy graphical interface to SleuthKit
dares rescue files from damaged CDs and DVDs (ncurses-interface)
dcfldd enhanced version of dd for forensics and security
ext3grep Tool to help recover deleted files on ext3 filesystems
foremost Forensics application to recover data
magicrescue recovers files by looking for magic bytes
myrescue rescue data from damaged harddisks
rdd a forensic copy program
recoverjpeg Recover jpeg pictures from a filesystem image
recover Undelete files on ext2 partitions
scalpel A Frugal, High Performance File Carver
scrounge-ntfs Data recovery program for NTFS filesystems
secure-delete tools to wipe files, free disk space, swap and memory
sleuthkit Tools for forensics analysis
testdisk Partition scanner and disk recovery tool
wipe Secure file deletion

b. User Management

adduser add and remove users and groups
calife Provides super user privileges to specific users
fakeroot Gives a fake root environment
finger user information lookup program
john active password cracking tool
makepasswd Generate and encrypt passwords
passwd change and administer password and group data
pwgen Automatic Password generation
rig Random identity generator
sudo Provide limited super user privileges to specific users
user-setup Set up initial user and password

c. Anti-Virus and Encryption

ccrypt secure encryption and decryption of files and streams
chkrootkit rootkit detector
clamav anti-virus utility for Unix - command-line interface
clamav-freshclam anti-virus utility for Unix - virus database update utility
clamfs An user-space anti-virus protected file system
fileschanged command-line utility that reports when files have been altered
iptables administration tools for packet filtering and NAT
mcrypt Replacement for old unix crypt(1)
tiger Report system security vulnerabilities

9. Time

a. Calendar Utilities

abook text-based ncurses address book application
birthday Display information about pending events on login
calcurse text-based calendar and todo manager
ccal Colorised calendar utility
devtodo hierarchical, prioritised todo list manager
gcalcli Google Calendar Command Line Interface
gcal Prints calendars
hodie prints the date in latin
leave Reminds you when you have to leave
note small program managing notes from commandline
pal command-line calendar program that can keep track of events
pcal generate Postscript calendars without X
remind a sophisticated reminder service
tdl To-do list manager
tina A curses personal information manager.
tudu Command line hierarchical ToDo list
when tiny personal calendar
worklog Keep Track of Time worked on Projects
wyrd text-based calendar applicatio

b. Scheduling Tools

anacron cron-like program that doesn't go by time
and Auto Nice Daemon
at Delayed job execution and batch processing
cron management of regular background processing
loadwatch Run a program using only idle cycles
rcconf Debian Runlevel configuration tool
sysv-rc-conf SysV init runlevel configuration tool for the terminal
timeout Run a command with a time limit.