which distro?

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Probably the easiest for demonstration purposes would be Red Hat. This
is the distribution used for testing and development by Raman. 
Debian may not be the best choice at the moment. While I think its the
best distribution for developers and is the one I use, Debian is going
through a bit of change at the moment with new glibc/gcc packages
etc. As an example, nobody has been able to run the new DECTalk
software synthesizer with Debian unless they run the unstable
distribution (and even then it has some problems). 

The Dectalk Express hardware synthesizer is very simple to setup and
very reliable. I've found IBM's ViaVoice extremely good, but they are
no longer supporting it for Linux and you probably won't be able to
get the packages. Fonix has just released a software only version of
the Dectalk Express for $50US and Raman has written a driver for it. I
have not been able to get it to run well under Debian, but apparently
its quite usable under Red hat 7.2. 

There are also drivers available for mbrolla (not sure of the status),
DoubleTalk LT, Dectalk Multi-Voice, Apollo and flite (eflite). An
announcement came out today regarding a new version of the Festival
driver which has now got a new maintainer. It is possible either the
files were not yet checked in when you looked on sourceforge or had
not propergated to all the mirrors - try again tomorrow and if they
are still not there, send another e-mail to this list. 

Tim

>>>>> "Mirabella," == Mirabella, Mathew J <Mathew.Mirabella@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

 Mirabella,> All.  I am going to install linux and emacspeak (maybe
 Mirabella,> speakup as well) on a system for demonstration purposes
 Mirabella,> and for a few other people to manage.  None of the group
 Mirabella,> are really familiar with Linux.  The demos will mainly be
 Mirabella,> for web browsing and accessibility of OS for blind and vi
 Mirabella,> people with tasks like email, listening to audio,
 Mirabella,> programming etc.

 Mirabella,> Can anyone give their views on which distro will work
 Mirabella,> with best performance and less hastles with emacspeak and
 Mirabella,> the related tts?  My current list of choices are: debian
 Mirabella,> 3.0 woody red hat 8.0 have access to a dectalk express,
 Mirabella,> but this is not mine to keep.  So... I am looking at
 Mirabella,> trying via voice or festival for my own system.  i
 Mirabella,> noticed an email on this list mentioning that festival
 Mirabella,> (not flight as such) is on sourceforge.  but i looked and
 Mirabella,> there are no files released as yet.  what is the status
 Mirabella,> of this?

 Mirabella,> I believe all the hardware that we have is pretty
 Mirabella,> standard.  I would like to use stable versions if i can,
 Mirabella,> but would like to know if there are any issues that
 Mirabella,> require debian unstable or some such.  i have a toshiba
 Mirabella,> laptop i would like to try as well.  If anyone requires
 Mirabella,> more info on the hardware in order to provide the right
 Mirabella,> advice, please email me off list.

 Mirabella,> Mat.

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 Mirabella,> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your
 Mirabella,> address on the emacspeak list send mail to
 Mirabella,> "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a subject of
 Mirabella,> "unsubscribe" or "help"


-- 
Tim Cross
Senior Analyst/Programmer
Applications Group - Information Technology
University of New England
 Phone: +61 2 6773 3210
   Fax: +61 2 6773 3424
E-Mail: tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx
   Web: http://www.une.edu.au/itd/systems/systems.html
---
Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?"

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