Hi everyone Happy New Year to you all.
I am really enjoying this discussion and also found it fascinating. I would like to use the command line more and while I have some experience with it much of what is being discussed here goes over my head. I am wondering if there are any tutorials available to help someone set a system such as the one being discussed up from scratch. Well I can access the command line from a GUI I am reliant upon a graphical user interface being pre-installed with orca before I can use the command line. I appreciate that historically Linux was viewed by many as a programmers operating system, but in recent years it has become much more user-friendly and available to every day computer users. Any pointers to tutorials to set this up from scratch from a blindness perspective it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Warmest wishes James Sent from my iPhone > On 31 Dec 2021, at 05:16, Jordan Livesey <jordanlives...@gmail.com> wrote: > > That is why when you are just starting out on the console, and you know how > to set up speak up, the keyboard shortcuts for that only require you to hold > down the caps lock key by default, when ever I do an install I always turn > the volume up with caps lock and 2 to turn up the volume, but as a rule of > thumb, I generally don’t need to use it as the terminal gets all the work I > need done, a simple sudo aptitude update and sudo aptitude upgrade if needed > if I check for updates which I do regularly > >> On 31 Dec 2021, at 03:14, Jeffery Mewtamer <mewta...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Even with console applications, there are various toolkits that allow >> for the creation of pseudo-GUIs and many such applications do have a >> number of keyboard commands, though they don't always adhere to the >> conventions shared by most GUI applications(e.g. in the Nano text >> editor, save is ctrl+o, not ctrl+s, cut and paste are ctrl+k and >> ctrl+u instead of ctrl+x and ctrl+v, and find is ctrl+w instead of >> ctrl+f) >> >> Most such text-only GUIs are built on ncurses, and there are packages >> like dialog that allow shell scripts to to display dialog boxes and >> scrollable menus. >> >> I also think it worth noting that, on most distros, there isn't just >> one console, but several and that you can easily switch between them >> with just a couple of key presses. >> >> As a general rule, each console is reference by the abbreviation tty >> followed by a number and if you're in one console, you switch to a >> different one by pressing alt+ the function key corresponding to the >> number of the console you want. The number varies from distro to >> distro, but 12 is common, one for each function key on a standard >> keyboard, though I understand setups with 24 and a distinction made >> between left alt and right alt when switching aren't uncommon. If >> you're running an Xserver, it takes up one of the consoles, and if >> you're in the GUI, you typically need to do trl+alt+fn to break out of >> the GUI and into the text consoles. If you start x manually, the >> xserver will be on whichever console you were on when you invoked >> startx, but if your system boots into the desktop automatically, which >> console is used for the GUI varies from distro to distro, though I >> believe tty1 and tty6 or tty7 are the most common. >> >> I usually have a stripped down Xserver running Firefox+Orca on tty1 >> and use tty2+ for everything else... at the moment, I have: >> >> Firefox+Orca running on tty1 >> aumix(a audio mixer) opened in tty2 >> A text file open in nano on tty3 >> tty4 at the command prompt in the directory where the text file that's >> open in tty3 is located, for easily running wc to get word count of >> the file without having to close and reopen my editor or if I need to >> pull up a different file to reference something. >> tty5 is open to the directory where Firefox dumps all of my downloads. >> >> and from Firefox, I just use ctrl+alt+F2-F5 to jump to aumix, the open >> text file, the directory where the file is saved, or my downloads >> directory, and can switch between any of those text consoles with just >> alt+a function key. >> >> And while I haven't use them, there are utilities like screen and some >> others to facilitate multi-tasking in a single console. >> >> And if things are properly configured, switching between the console >> running X and one of the text consoles should seamlessly switch >> between Orca and your console screen reader, though this can sometimes >> be tricky to get working right. >> >
