[BRLTTY] Getting started

[Lee Maschmeyer]

Hi Daniel,

You cannot install Linux "over the top of Windows." Doing so would destroy 
Windows and turn your computer into a Linux-only machine.

There are two ways to get Windows and Linux to coexist. One is to partition 
your disk into Windows sections and Linux sections. This is free but rather 
complicated and requires care in implementation. My computer here is done 
this way but I wasn't the one who did the disk partitioning.

The other way is to add an additional hard disk. Most computers have space 
for an extra disk and you can get them at computer stores. This requires 
sighted help, if not in the installation then in the BIOS configuration. 
It's the safest way to go but it's not free.

There is also something called a "live CD". The last time I used such a 
beast you couldn't save any files, or had to do so on a floppy (presumably 
nowadays you can use a thumb drive). In this method nothing gets installed 
on your hard disk at all. You boot from a CD or DVD which contains the whole 
Linux system. While Fedora has a live CD I don't think it has brltty. Some 
other systems do have it; GRML and Ubuntu are the two most often mentioned.

Back when I was getting started in Linux, 5 years ago, the Speakup site had 
an excellent introduction to how to install the Red Hat systems. If you 
don't choose Speakup for your speech you can ignore the Speakup-specific 
parts, but it's still a really good introduction to concepts, at least if 
it's anything like it used to be. Go to Linux-Speakup.org (note the hyphen 
in that name).

One thing you could do if you've got a couple GB to spare on your Windows 
machine is to install Cygwin. This is a Linux emulation that runs under 
Windows. It's sponsored by Red Hat so it's fairly similar to Fedora. It's 
much slower than real Linux but it's good enough to get your feet wet and 
learn commands. Go to cygwin.com (it's free). The installer is difficult to 
use but it's not impossible (at least with Jaws).

I'm a braille-only user but it's my impression that brltty's speech 
capabilities probably won't be robust enough for fulltime speech use. But 
it's a nice adjunct to braille and easy to get running.

Because I've been doing this for awhile and haven't kept up with the latest 
developments I expect there are some errors in the above. That's one reason 
I responded - to get the flames caused by my goofs. :-)

Rest assured you've got a fair amount of studying to do before you can 
really get started. Even Cygwin, because of the peculiar installer, takes 
some studying. The nice thing about Cygwin is you don't have to reboot to 
use it; I use Cygwin all the time and for most purposes it's adequate 
especially with brltty.

Good luck, and stay tuned; I'm sure there will be significant corrections 
coming real soon now.

-- 
Lee Maschmeyer
<lee_maschmeyer at wayne.edu>

"Be kind to your fur-bearing friends,
For a skunk may be somebody's brother."
     --Fred Allen