Sight Village 2009!

I publically launched Vinux at the Sight-Village Exhibition in Birmingham last week, this is the biggest VI event of the year in the UK attending by thousands of people over three days. All of the main hardware and software manufacturers attend as well as VI orientated institutions and educational providers etc. I managed to distribute about 150 Vinux 1.52 CD's over the three days and although people were a little sceptical at first about the idea of a free, open-source, Linux based operating system, most were pleasantly surprised when they came and had a play with it. I purposely took the oldest laptops I could find to demonstrate it on, so that people would not be disappointed with the performance when they tried it on their own computers at home. It was also great to finally meet a few people off the mailing list: David Knight, Dennis Freedman and Georgina Joyce all managed to make the trip from the North of England, and I also bumped into Digital Darragh from Ireland who recorded an short interview with me which he will post on his website. On the Friday after Sight-Village, I presented two workshops on Vinux to members of the BCAB (British Computer Association for the Blind) each attended by 6-12 people. The BCAB provided six laptops with a dual boot setup (Vinux and Vista) and we didn't run into any major problems although speech-dispatcher did crash a few times while online. I think everyone enjoyed the sessions, and were pleasantly surprised as apparently the last time they looked at Linux it was a complete disaster! They made me feel very welcome and I really enjoyed running the sessions. They are a very friendly bunch and I would heartily recommend anyone who is living in the UK and is not already a member to sign-up!

2nd Alpha of Vinux 2.0 Uploaded!

I have just uploaded the 2nd Alpha of Vinux 2.0! This release sees the installation of Speakup and Espeakup, providing console based screen reading as well as Orca with the Gnome desktop. You can switch to a terminal session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1. Both Orca and Speakup use Espeak so there is no difference in voice quality or performance between Orca and Speakup. I have also added two audio beeps which sound when the Live CD boot prompt is ready, and an audio signal when the GDM login window is ready, which is retained after installation. Again I would like to get feedback on the new features and any other bugs and/or suggestions you might have.

Brave New World: Vinux 2.0 Alpha 1 Released!

I have just uploaded the first alpha release of Vinux-2.0 - it is a very basic release which does not yet have many of the features that Vinux usually has. It is based on Debian Lenny and all I have done for now is to create an Installable Live CD with Orca enabled and configured by default using Alsa and Speech-Dispatcher. I have also made the standard Orca SysAdmin changes so users will be able to run admin apps, but I have not modified the menu launchers so you will have to launch admin applications from the terminal by entering 'su' followed by your password and then type the relevant command.

The primary purpose of this release is for people to test the basic screen-reading performance of Orca with Alsa and Speech-Dispatcher. There are still many things to do and some things I tried to do but could not get to work. The main priority at the moment is to get Orca running and enable ethernet/wireless access, because once you have speech and an internet connection you are then able to sort out most issues yourself.

I have been unable to get YASR working at all, with Eflite, Festival or Speech-Dispatcher, and festival doesn't work with Orca either so I have removed both applications for now. I have installed Brltty and enabled Braille in Orca but I was unable to find the usual /etc/defaults/brltty file which starts Brltty at boot.

I would therefore like feedback on both the performance and stability of Orca and information on whether the wireless connections worked out of the box. If so please let me know the laptop and wifi card details if possible; and if wireless doesn't work or you manage to get it working yourself please let me know how you got it working and I will incorporate this into the next next alpha release. If anyone is brave enough to try installing it then I would like feedback on the accessibility of the new installer - remastersys-installer. This should be launched from the terminal if you require speech, just type 'remastersys-installer' after switching to su, or type 'remastersys-installer intl' if you want to choose a language other than English. This installer uses cfdisk for formatting purposes so you can either use the existing partitions or create/modify the partitions before or during the installation process.

Accessibility v Functionality: On the Horns of a Dilemma!

I have spent the last few weeks trying out lots of different distros as possible foundations upon which to build Vinux. I have looked at Ubuntu 9.04, Mint 7.0 (based on 9.04), Debian Lenny 5.0, Dream Linux 3.5, Fedora 11 and OpenSuse 11. The conclusion I have come to is that I am going to have to choose between accessibility and functionality. Ubuntu and Mint offer the greatest functionality in terms of ease of use and hardware detection etc. In fact Mint is better than Ubuntu in this regard as it has a lot of extra features and multimedia codecs etc., and I am now using a remastered version of Mint 7.0 on my main workstations which do not require any accessibility software. However the performance of accessibility software on both Ubuntu and Mint is poor. The speech is slow and jerky and more often than not locks up at some point. This is likely to be caused by PuleAudio and compounded by a cutting edge version of Xorg. Debian on the other hand, while it doesn't provide accessibility in terms of speech or magnification out of the box (Braille support is available) allows me to set up Orca with Alsa and Speech-Dispatcher and produce a very responsive screen-reader. The down side is that Debian doesn't support anywhere near the amount of hardware Ubuntu and Mint do, especially when it comes to restricted or non-free drivers and codecs etc. So this is the dilemma I face! Do I provide good accessibility at the cost of functionality, or functionality at the cost of accessibility? After wrestling with this problem for several weeks I have come to the conclusion that I have to give priority to accessibility. I can certainly improve the functionality of Debian to some extent by installing wireless drivers and some multimedia codecs etc., and as long as Vinux is accessible users can can then either get support in resolving hardware issues or work out solutions themselves as long as they have a functioning screen-reader etc. The main advantage of Debian is that it still uses the Alsa sound system, which works a lot better with Orca and Speech-Dispatcher than PulseAudio. So I am hoping to offer users a very stable and accessible distribution, but it is not going to be very cutting edge or support as wide a variety of hardware as Ubuntu and/or Mint can. I will still be monitoring the most popular distros to see if the issues caused by PulseAudio etc., have been resolved and if they have then of course I will then have the option to switch back to Ubuntu or Mint etc. The rumours are that in Gnome 3.0 Speech-Dispatcher will become the default speech server for Orca and hopefully then the issues with PulseAudio will eventually be resolved, and maybe one day one of the major distros will actually get off their arses and produce a fully accessible distro (hears faint oinking in the distance as vast herds of pigs fly south for the winter).

Vinux 1.5 Plus: Frankenstein's Monster!

I am just in the process of uploading Vinux 1.5 Plus to the website. This is an experimental release exclusively for members of the Vinux Development Group, and will not be announced anywhere else. It contains lots of new experimental features which are bound to cause problems, so I would not advise anyone to try and use it as their primary OS! I would however like you to try it out and provide feedback on some of the new features. These include:

The Emacspeak complete audio desktop, which provides a text based interface in a terminal window or in console mode for advanced users. This can be launched from the Accessibility sub-menu or by pressing 'ctrl+shift+e' after stopping Orca and/or Speech-Dispatcher.

The LinuxSpeaks audio desktop, which also provides a simple menu driven text based interface in a terminal window or in console mode for beginners and intermediate users. This can be launched from the Accessibility sub-menu or by pressing 'ctrl+shift+l' after stopping Orca and/or Speech-Dispatcher.

Support for five more languages: Spanish, French. German, Dutch and Flemish. This can be started by typing a two letter code 'es', 'fr', 'de', 'nl' or 'fl' at the boot prompt. This will change the display language, but you will need to change the Orca voice and the keyboard layout manually for now.

I have installed Ubuntu Restricted Extras and some other non-free applications and codecs from the Medibuntu repository. This means that this version of Vinux will play MP3 files and encrypted DVD's out of the box, but be aware that this may contravene local patent/copyright laws in some countries. If this is the case then please do not download or redistribute it.

I have reinstalled all of the packages I removed from the original Ubuntu 8.10 in order to make room on the CD and I have installed all of the latest updates from Canonical as of today. Not all of these applications are accessible to someone using a screen-reader but they are accessible for someone using a screen-magnifier or high contrast themes.

I will post the URL when I have finished uploading it and tested the md5sum, which probably won't be until tomorrow afternoon. Please don't try to download this version until it I supply the URL as trying to download the temporary file might disrupt the upload.

Once again, this is a very experimental version which will probably have lots of bugs, but the feedback I get on some of these new features will help me to build the next version of Vinux which will in all probability be based on Debian.

Vinux 1.5: Better Late Than Never!

Vinux 1.5 is now available for download and testing by members of the Vinux Development Forum. If no serious bugs are found in the next few days then I will post a public release announcement on other mailing lists etc. New features include: Speech-Dispatcher as the default speech server, YASR configured to use the Festival speech synthesiser, New shortcuts to start/kill Speech-Dispatcher (ctrl+shift+s and ctrl+shift+k), Orca weather keystroke (insert+w) set to Birmingham UK (UKXX0018), Larger fonts and higher contrast theme by default, Installation of the Firefox Accessibar plugin, Mousekeys enabled by default, Gedit's advanced plugins enabled by default and the Medibuntu repository enabled by default. I have not yet implemented all of the features I wanted to include in this release. I have fitted as many features as I could on a CD sized image, but I could not fit on Emacspeak, LinuxSpeaks or support for foreign languages etc., in a 700MB image. I hope to release a 'Vinux 1.5 Plus' edition shortly which will contain both of these extra accessibility packages, support for foreign languages and some more multimedia codecs etc. However this will obviously be larger than 700MB and will have to be burnt on to a DVD. Vinux 1.5 will probably be the last release of Vinux based on Ubuntu as there are too many bugs in the latest release and their rapid and cutting edge release cycle means that it is not really a suitable base for creating a stable accessible distribution. So once I have released 'Vinux 1.5 Plus' I am planning to switch to Debian as a base. I believe this will provide a much more stable platform in the long term.

A Freudian Slap!

As some of you may have noticed I haven't been very active on the mailing list for the last few weeks and haven't made any real progress with the next release of Vinux. This is because at the beginning of the month I was informed that myself and eleven of my colleagues in the R&D Team were being made redundant in an effort cut costs at the College. So I have spent the last few weeks concentrating on trying to find myself a new job and put Vinux on the shelf temporarily. I have now been offered a teaching position at the same College, which is what I have done for most of my working life. However, I will no longer be teaching ICT but Critical Thinking, Sociology and Psychology (hence the Freudian slap). This may at first glance appear to be a rather radical shift, but in fact I started out as a Philosophy Lecturer after completing a degree and PhD in Philosophy, so it is more of a return to my academic roots than it might first appear. I will of course still be working with visually impaired learners and continuing with the development of Vinux in my spare time! It will still probably be a few weeks before I have wrapped everything up and made the transition to the new post. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

The Jerky Jackalope and Other Tales.

Its been a few weeks now since the release of Ubuntu 9.04 and the overwhelming impression is one of a bug ridden disaster comparable to the first Men in Black Movie. There are serious problems with the new version of Xorg 1.6 , the installer and the new Ext4 file system. It's like 7.04 and 7.10 all over again, and if history repeats itself it is unlikely any of this damage will be put right until the release of 9.10 or maybe even 10.04! So for now I will be basing the next release of Vinux on the relatively stable Intrepid Ibex. 8.10 is supported with updates and security patches for another year which will take us to the next LTS release which will be supported for three years. I have come to the conclusion that it is not going to be practical to follow Ubuntu's six month cycle, as it takes a few months to get Vinux stable and bug free. So the options are to base Vinux on the long term service releases and/or switch to Debian as the base. Both options would offer the benefit of stability at the cost of cutting edge features. In terms of ethics and open-source principles Debian would be preferable as it is dedicated to the open-source philosophy, while Ubuntu include non-free packages and drivers etc. I also suspect that at some point in the future Ubuntu will go commercial once it has a big enough user-base, and go on to become the Microsoft of the Linux world. So once I have built Vinux 1.5 I will be experimenting with Debian Lenny which remastersys also supports, and from what I have read has more features than the Ubuntu version including a text based installer which should be more accessible than Ubiquity. Watch this space!

Vinux 1.5 - The Manifesto!

I have now had time to reflect on all of the changes I plan to introduce in Vinux 1.5 and they broadly fall into five categories: Screen-Readers and Speech Synthesis, Fonts, Colours and Layouts, Language and Keyboard Layouts, Help and Guidance and the Remastering Process itself.

Firstly, there will be significant improvements and additions to the screen-reading and speech synthesizers provided by Vinux. I intend to install and configure speech-dispatcher to be the default speech service in conjunction with Orca and Espeak, which should provide a much more responsive screen-reading experience. I will reconfigure YASR to use the Festival speech synthesizer by default, which will provide a much higher quality console based screen-reader in the event of any problems with Orca. I will also be installing both the Emacspeak and LinuxSpeaks text based audio desktops, which use the eflite and espeak speech synthesizers respectively. By providing a choice of four different screen-readers and four speech synthesizers I am hoping that you will always be able to access your computer even if you encounter problems with your preferred screen-reader and voice. In addition I hope to include keystroke commands for starting and/or restarting each of these screen-readers so you should never be left in the lurch!

Secondly, I plan to make changes to the appearance of Vinux to improve its visual accessibility for partially sighted users. This will include increasing the default font and icon size, improving the contrast of the desktop and application windows, increasing the size and layout of the top and bottom panels, changing the desktop background and providing a wider choice of accessibility themes and icons. I will also be installing Firefox accessibility toolbars and plugins which allow the user to tweak the fonts, colours and layouts displayed in their browser on the fly and provide a choice of terminals with large font sizes and high contrast colour schemes. In addition I will be installing xcalib which will allow a user to invert the screen colours and change its contrast and brightness with keystrokes without having to use Orca and/or Compiz. Finally, mousekeys will be enabled by default, which will allow more accurate control over the mouse pointer and I am going to reorganise the main menus so that there are separate sub-menus for purely console based applications.

Thirdly, I am hoping to include support for several European languages and keyboard layouts by default including: Spanish, French, German, Dutch and Flemish. This will help to overcome the additional linguistic barriers many people face when trying to use a distribution that is not in their native language.

Fourthly, I plan to introduce a whole host of help and guidance features that will make peoples transition into Linux that little bit easier. This will include an autorun.inf file and a HTML guide to booting and installing Vinux for people who are still using Windows computers, the addition of bookmarks to lots of useful Linux accessibility related websites and resources in Firefox, Lynx and Netrik; and some audio/video guides to the accessibility features offered by Vinux. I also hope to include a list of useful terminal commands stored in the bash history file, which will allow beginners to access complex commands by pressing the cursor up key, as well as providing a series of simple Zenity GUI interfaces to useful command line applications that require the correct arguments and syntax, which a beginner is unlikely to know. Finally in this section I will be pre-enabling all of the Ubuntu repositories including those which contain restricted packages as well as enabling useful plugins in applications like Gedit etc.

Fifthly, I will be incorporating some applications which are not included for the benefit of the end user at all, but to help facilitate the creation of Vinux itself. These are programs such as AptonCD, Isomaster, gFTP and Gambas2 that are not particularly accessible but I use to create Vinux and/or accessible applications and having them included on the CD/DVD will make my life a lot easier as I will hopefully be able to create a new version of Vinux without having to install a different distribution or lots of extra packages.

Did Nostradamus Predict the Release of Vinux 1.5?

No he didn't! But if he had he might have predicted some of the following features for the next version of your favourite accessible open-source operating system: The installation and configuration of Speech-Dispatcher as the default speech system for Orca and Espeak without the loss of multi-channel sound facilities. The addition of LinuxSpeaks and Emacspeak as two alternative x-terminal or purely console based audio desktops for the beginner and advanced user respectively. The reconfiguration of YASR to use the Festival speech synthesizer by default to provide a higher quality emergency backup screen-reader for the x-terminal or the console. The installation of accessibility toolbars and plugins for Firefox which allow the user to tweak the layout, fonts and colours of the internet on the fly. The installation of xcalib and configuration of xbindkeys to provide colour inversion as well as the ability to change the brightness, contrast and RGB colours of the x display without using Orca or Compiz. A larger font and higher contrast theme for the Gnome desktop by default as well as the inclusion of extra accessibility themes and icons. Support for the Spanish, French, German, Dutch and Flemish languages and keyboard layouts out of the box. Mousekeys will be enabled out of the box which will allow a user to control the mouse pointer using the numpad arrow keys. The addition of an autorun.inf file to load a html guide on booting and installing Vinux if placed in a Windows machine. The addition of NVDA, Firefox and a few other windows based open-source applications for Windows users to try out. The enabling of all of the advanced text editing plugins for Gedit by default. If possible the replacement of the default Ubuntu usplash, boot splash and GDM login theme with more accessible alternatives. A choice of gnome-terminal with more accessible colour schemes and larger font sizes. The inclusion of more simple document converter scripts like antiword and pdftotext etc to enable the conversion of proprietary document formats into plain text. The reorganisation of the Vinux menus so that there are separate menus for console based applications instead of integrating them into the existing menus. The creation of zenity dialogue boxes to enable a simple gui interface to terminal scripts that require user input and/or arguments to run. The inclusion of bookmarks for useful Linux/Accessibility websites and services in Firefox, Lynx and Netrik by default. The enabling of all supported Ubuntu repositories including those which contain non-free and/or restricted packages, although none of these will be included on the CD/DVD. A list of useful terminal commands provided by default in the bash history file to make it easier for beginners to start exploring the Linux terminal. An update to StormDragon's latest version of the Orca customisations.py script which makes the time, date, battery and weather information available from Orca. In the very distant future I am also planning to experiment with making Vinux based on Xubuntu with the light but GTK enabled XFCE desktop and Debian Lenny 5.0 to see what advantages or disadvantages can be gained. That's All Folks!

Speech-Dispatcher Returns from the Dead!

I am very happy to tell you that I have now managed to get speech-dispatcher to work on Vinux without losing the multi-channel sound capabilities. The final peice of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place when I was experimenting with Debian Lenny and managed to get speech-dispatcher working properly. I realised that I hadn't been doing anything wrong at all but I hadn't really understood the difference between speech-dispatcher running in user mode and as a system service. What caused this was an error which seems to have crept into spd-conf and my failure to understand the difference between the two modes. For some reason the spd-conf supplied in the Ubuntu 8.10 repositories set the syntheziser port to 6561 for user mode and 6560 for running as a service, and it should be the other way around. Because I didn't understand the difference between the two modes I had been setting up speech-dispatcher in user mode but then using init.d to start it as a service instead of using the speech-dispatcher -d command. Given these two school boy errors I was never going to get it to work! So for anyone who wants to try this at home here is a step by step guide to getting speech-dispatcher working on Ubuntu 8.10 with multi-channel sound support.

1. Run 'sudo apt-get install speech-dispatcher python-speechd' in a terminal

2. Once installed run 'spd-conf' in the same terminal.

3. Accept all of the default options except type 'pulse' for the sound server and '6560' for the synthesizer port.

4. Speech-dispatcher should then speak if everything is going to plan!

5. Use the 'speech-dispatcher -d' command to start up speech-dispatcher as a daemon'

6. Open the Orca preferences window and select speech-dispatcher as the speech synthesizer and click apply.

7. Orca should now be a lot more snappy and responsive.

8. Finally open the Session Manager from the preferences menu, create a new entry called speech-dispatcher and type 'speech-dispatcher -d' as the command, then reboot and enjoy your new snappier speech!

9. If you want to use espeak with YASR, you can then edit the /etc/yasr/yasr.conf file by commenting out the default Eflite synthesizer and uncomment the speech-dispatcher and corresponding synthesizer port entries.

Through the Looking Glass with Debian Lenny!

This week I have been experimenting with the latest Debian 5.0 release, code-named Lenny after the talking, walking binoculars in the Pixar animation Toy Story. I began by installing the full desktop version of Lenny onto one of my desktop PC's and found that Orca was not installed by default. So after enabling all of the repositories in the software sources list I downloaded Orca and once configured it ran with no problems. I then installed YASR and Festival but could not get YASR to run with Eflite or Festival, and had no luck getting Orca to use Festival either. No error messages, just silence! Then I got a bit more adventurous and decided to install and configure speech-dispatcher in user mode, something I have not been able to get working using Ubuntu 8.10 without losing multi-channel sound support. And low and behold it worked first time, very responsive speech and multi-channel sound simultaneously! This is probably because Debian Lenny doesn't use PulseAudio like Ubuntu and speech-dispatcher works much better with Alsa. However I couldn't get it to work with Festival of Flite either. Not the end of the world though, if I have Orca, Speech-Dispatcher and Espeak all working nicely out of the box it is less likely that people will want to use YASR or Festival anyway (and I think YASR can be set to use speech-dispatcher as well). So I hope to create an experimental version of Vinux based on Debian 5.0 in the near future and then let members of the Vinux Development Forum have a play with it. It will have most of the same features and setup as the Ubuntu version with the exception of no USB pendrive installer as yet, but with the addition of Speech-Dispatcher out of the box and the Remastersys text based installer.