Hugh Sasse's Linux Page

Linux is a freely available operating system.

Main Sites | Documentation | Accessibility | Interoperability | Distributions

Documentation

www.tldp.org The Linux Documentation Project: has the HOWTOs
howtos.tucows.com
META-FAQ on where to find Linux information

Accessibility

Linux can be accessed in a text only mode and can theefore be used with synthetic speech, or with a GUI.

Linux Accessibility HOWTO.: Mirror at tldp.org.
LINUX-ACCESS homepage: includes the LINUX-ACCESS HOWTO (unc.edu mirror of the HOWTO document .
How to Develop Accessible Linux Applications.: Seems to date from about 2002
Accessiser.: Accerciser is an interactive Python accessibility explorer for the GNOME desktop. It uses AT-SPI to inspect and control widgets, allowing you to check if an application is providing correct information to assistive technologies and automated test frameworks.
X11-big-cursor MINIHOWTO.: How to use enlarged mouse cursors with the X window system.
BLINUX Project.: aims to make Linux and its documentation accessible to blind people. The guidelines for Documenting Linux for the Visually Impaired mention the needs of deafblind people specifically, but these seem to have vanished. There are documents at http://leb.net/pub/blinux/doc. This project is an outgrowth of The BLINUX list which is a mailing list about this accessibility. There was a BLINUX FTP site at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux/ and at ftp://ssv1.union.utah.edu/pub/mirrors/blinux/, but these seem to have gone as well. The Mirror site in Germany at ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/blinux/ still exists at the time of writing (05-JUL-2005)
Ocularis: Linux distribution for the Visually Impaired. Audio based. This mainly points at the Oralux site now.
Oralux.: A distribution of a speech based Knoppix linux distribution, which boots into speech from the CD-ROM.
BRLTTY.: Access Software for Unix for a Blind Person Using a Soft Braille Terminal.
BRLSPEAK (BraiLleSPEAK): A Debian braille and speech capable linux distro.

One argument levelled against Linux is the inability to interoperate with people using Windows. Programs that read and sometimes write files compatible with Windows programs are becoming available. Some are listed here.

OpenOffice.
StarOffice.
GnomeOffice.: includes AbiWord, Evolution, Gnumeric...
Thinkfree Office.
GnomeOffice.
Then there are products actually ported to Linux: CorelDRAW and WordPerfect. Oracle.

Distributions

An incomplete list.

0sys.: A small linux distro.
Redhat.
TINY Linux.: is a small distribution for using old computers.
Trinux.: A small linux distribution focussing on security features.
ttylinux.: Needs about 4MB of disk, but needs to be built on top of linux at the moment (02-OCT-2001).

Utilities

mgetty
Wine: Windows on Unix

Last Modified on 18-JUN-2013

Created 14-JAN-2000

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