By "drop in" you mean they come up talking even if you press nothing on the keyboard? No, they don't do that. With ubuntu, you have to press a few hot keys. With grml, you have to enter parameters at the boot prompt and then run a script when it finishes booting. Actually, I haven't downloaded grml for months. By now they may have modified it. Speakup has been modified so you don't need a custom kernel any more. So now there's no reason to have to enter boot parameters. Having to enter both boot parameters and run a script was brain damaged anyway because they could have run the script automatically and had it do nothing if the software speech kernel module was not loaded. I don't know how to remaster any of these distros so that software speech comes up automatically. I tried to modify grml to speak automatically but I couldn't get it to work. That is probably because I couldn't understand the grml init.d stuff. It was crazy for them to mess with that stuff. But it's not at all like standard init.d scripts. It's fairly easy to remaster either knoppix or grml so that your hardware synth is used. All you have to do is edit the linuxiso.cfg file and add the boot parameter for your synth. I can give you a URL for an iso file for grml remastered to use a doubletalk hardware synth if that will help you any. The file isn't available right now but I could put it somewhere that you could download it if you want it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <dave.mehler@gmail.com> To: "'Blind sysadmins list'" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 3:07 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] knoppix with speech

Hi, Thanks for your response. What i was looking for was for a two situation solution. The first and the reason i asked about knoppix was a drop in CD that came up with speech, software speech, in a graphical interface, a CLI would also work, that i could use for diagnostic, backup, and troubleshooting purposes. Are any of these distros drop in and up talking or can they be remastered to do so? Thanks. Dave.

David Mehler, MCP, Network+, A+ -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 3:03 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] knoppix with speech

Knoppix has support for speakup built into the kernel. I don't know if it comes with software speech but you can use any knoppix CD if you have a hardware synth.

For software speech , I would use grml or ubuntu. Ubuntu gives you speech via orca in a graphical user environment. Grml gives you speech via speakup in a character interface.

I use all 3 on different occasions but I probably use grml the most. You can google for the addresses of their web sites. They're easy to find.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <dave.mehler@gmail.com> To: "'Blind sysadmins list'" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 2:34 PM Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] knoppix with speech

...

Hello, Has anyone got knoppix with speech or a howto to make one? I'm wanting to boot a box with an accessible distro then install another which does not have terminal or live support. Thanks. Dave.

David Mehler, MCP, Network+, A+

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