Hi Norman Well let's turn the tables on this thread - I use Windows in preference to Ubuntu!
Now for those of you who didn't delete this mail straight away here's the reason why. As you may have gathered from a couple of other postings I've done I'm partially sighted and use screen readers a lot to navigate my way around the desktop - I have some residual sight but it's a strain . There are two major problems with Ubuntu, and being fair as well, for any Linux distro. These are: * A very small proportion of Linux apps are compatible with the various Assistive Technologies * There is no graphical web browser that is compliant . However, that being said, FF3 is having LOTS of work done on it to rectify this problem. It is still too bleeding edge at the moment to make it a viable alternative in Linux - Windows is fine. The biggest problem is the former - the only way you can find out if an app works with the assistive technologies is to download it. Which cannot be done through Synaptic as it's not compliant! So I'm afraid that at the moment although I am a true advocate of FOS, I have to still use Windows. This is because of M$'s dictatorship actually being a positive influence in that most applications that are written and uses the normal MS APIs for GUI have this interface in built and therefore is instantly useable. To end on a plus point though, the guys working on Orca, the user interface that links the Assistive Technologies together in Gnome, are doing absolutely superb work even though a month or so ago IBM withdrew their developer resource on the whole Assistive Technology project. It wobbled for a couple of weeks but things are back on track now thanks to the work of the peeps at Sun and the commitment from the IBM developers to still work on the project but in their own time. In fact here's a challenge for you all to do on those rainy evenings. Get Orca up and running - it's part of the Gnome desktop from 6.06 onwards - turn your monitors off, no cheating now, and have a go at doing some of your normal tasks to see what I mean. The voices are fun to play with as well if you're running Fiesty. And you may actually find it useful to have the text to speech engine running as you write as it's a dam site easier to spot spelling mistakes as you're using two different parts of the brain. In fact the only area where you have no chance of using Linux at all is if you rely on Speech to Text conversion - there was a proof of idea app built by those nice people at Sun about 3 years + ago and that's where it's remained. A couple of projects have tried to take on the idea but unfortunately failed. I would go so far as to say that once FF is launched Gnome running on Linux is going to be the platform of choice for the disabled worldwide and that's not just on cost - my Windows compatible screen reader retails at ?350 on top of any other apps required, but is on the fact that the stuff works and works well without the long development times associated with Windows products. (with the above bourne in mind). reading this back the post seems a bit dis-jointed but you get the general idea. E -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of norman Sent: 21 June 2007 17:29 To: ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] suck it and see It's really great to read about all the applications that folk use with Ubuntu. It makes a wonderful change from kicking Windows and expounding on its problems. Every time that that OS is mentioned it is drawing attention to it and this, all good and true Ubuntu users, do not want. The motto should be that Ubuntu is the greatest because of what it is not because of what it isn't. Norman -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
