Eyes-free Linux Ninja! (Debian)

Debian Mate Media Controls

Mike — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:14:01 GMT

This is another post which deals with issues surrounding the use of pulseaudio for text-to-speech and access tech such as the Orca screen-reader.

In the previous post I described how to switch speech-dispatcher over to ALSA and avoid the use of pulseaudio. Doing this will make the console accessible with speakup even when you are logged in to a graphical desktop.

But the default media controls in a Debian machine using the Mate desktop, at least at the time of writing with Debian Jessie, are for pulseaudio.

I have experienced issues with my Dell Latitude D630 where the headphone jack goes silent. I have never established why. This can be very annoying and happens at the most inopportune moments, usually in a room full of sighted folks who would very quickly try and lynch me if they had to listen to espeak through my PC speakers for more than five minutes.

This can be fixed by uninstalling a couple of packages and installing some alternatives.

The packages we are going to remove are:

`mate-media-pulse
mate-settings-daemon-pulse

The two packages we are going to install in their place are:

mate-media-gstreamer
mate-settings-daemon-gstreamer

But, beware! The first time I did this I made the mistake of purging the first two before I installed the new packages and it broke my installation. I then had to re-install Orca, Mate and lightdm.

So we are going to let apt-get make the decisions about what to install and what to remove.

Do the following:

$ sudo apt-get install mate-media-gstreamer
$ sudo apt-get install mate-settings-daemon-gstreamer

You will hear some stuff about removing one and replacing it with the other.

After this your sound controls in Mate should be much more usable and include the headphone jack if you have one.

I can't claim originality for this. The problem and the fix described was experienced by my fellow Linux and Raspberry Pi hacker Rill.

Cinnamon and KDE Inaccessible on Debian Jessie

Mike — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:08:24 GMT

Now that Debian Jessie is out and the net install CD gives the option of a number of desktops, I've been trying some for accessibility.

Without much hope I tried Cinnamon and KDE. Both are totally silent.

For KDE I don't know if there is something else that needs to be installed, like qt-at-spi or something. But I assume, and that is not always very wise, that the Debian team would have included that.

Next I'll try XFCE. I know LXDE is at least partly accessible but Mate feels so snappy I'll stick with that as my working desktop.

Debian 8.0 'Jessie' Released

Mike — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 18:02:08 GMT

A few days after I installed Debian 'Jessie' Release Candidate 3 on one of my laptops, the full release happened.

On 25th April 2015 Debian announced the release of Debian 8.0 'Jessie'.

Long-awaited by fans of Debian, like me.

This release gives the choice of several different desktops, not just Gnome.

These desktops probably have differing levels of accessibility, but as noted before, the Mate desktop seems to be very accessible and is a joy to use.

I will be posting a full installation guide in the next few days.

Debian Jessie Release candidate 3 With Mate

Mike — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:51:43 GMT

In the last couple of days I have been trying out Release Candidate 3 of Debian Jessie.

I used the x86_64 net install CD image.

There are some minor differences from the Wheezy net install, most notable of which is the ability to choose between several different desktops:

Gnome
LXDE
XFCE
Mate
Cinnamon

There may be another one or two.

I chose Mate.

So far it's going OK. I have noticed a couple of things, one of which is annoying, the quiet volume of the installation voice, some of which are just observations.

These are:

The aforementioned very low volume of the SpeakUp speech during the install.
The mix of SysVInit and systemd.
The flakiness of the lightdm greeter in sometimes not speaking. Nothing new there.

On the Dell Latitude D630 I installed it on Mate feels nice and snappy, although the speech is a bit clipped.

There is some problem with the internal wifi which causes many messages to be spat out during boot, but the Latitude has a switch so I am able to switch off the wifi until I have logged into the desktop.

The specs of the Latitude are:

Intel Core 2 Duo.
2GHz Clock.
2GB RAM (with 2GB swap configured on Jessie).

Not exactly a screaming monster but nice and usable for programming and office stuff.

Orca has come a long way since Debian Wheezy, and I am looking forward to Jessie being released proper.

I'll totally document the accessible install process in a couple of days.

I have another Dell Latitude D630 with Trisquel Linux on it but I think this installation feels nicer.