Re: Forky installer speakup does not work after installation but orca does

Hi, Yes I totally understand and this is what I meant when I said that 
speakup works much better in the console then orca does in the graphical 
terminal.  My issue is that on Forky, if I press control and alt and f1 
I get no speech from the espeakup software and when working with the 
shell I prefer to use the console and not the graphical terminal 
application as like I said before orca will read things that speakup 
will not as it reads what updates and not what has already been read.  I 
prefer working in the text consoles and not the graphical terminals when 
I need to use the shell.  Nick Gawronski

On 3/23/2026 3:15 AM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> As Glenn correctly points out, speakup only works in a console and ORCA 
> only works in the graphical user interface (GUI) and opening up a text 
> terminal inside the GUI.
> 
> New comers often mix up running a text terminal in Orca compared with 
> directly opening one of the virtual consoles.
> 
> A console refers to the system's low-level text interface, such as 
> virtual consoles (TTYs accessed via Ctrl+Alt+F1-F6), which provide 
> direct, full-screen access to the OS kernel and shell without a 
> graphical environment.
> 
> A terminal (or terminal emulator like GNOME Terminal which uses Orca) is 
> a graphical windowed application within a desktop environment (e.g., 
> opened via Ctrl+Alt+T) that emulates a console, passing input to a shell 
> and displaying output.
> 
> I'm confused if everyone understands the difference because it's easy to 
> confuse them but they are two different things.
> 
> If everyone already knows this,  I apologize, but years ago I thought 
> orca running GNOME terminal was what people were talking about when they 
> mentioned the "console". It isn't,  it is more basic than the Graphical 
> User Interface (GUI), it's running underneath the GUI, underneath Orca. 
> Open it up as I described in the first paragraph. The Graphical 
> environment GUI runs in a console, but the other consoles are available 
> for use. Often F1 is the GUI so I proposed opening the F3 console.  
> Remember you can only run console apps and direct commands in a console 
> but you will notice how much faster it is than the GUI and Orca.
> 
> 
> David Ring
> 
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 02:05 K0LNY ?? <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>     I don't think you would want speakup in a terminal.
>     I am guessing that most people who want Speakup rather than Orca,
>     call up a
>     console and run Speakup there.
>     Speakup won't really work in a GUI session, which is where the
>     terminal is
>     running from.
>     Glenn
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     From: "john doe" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>     To: <[email protected] <mailto:debian-
>     [email protected]>>
>     Sent: Monday, March 23, 2026 12:44 AM
>     Subject: Re: Forky installer speakup does not work after
>     installation but
>     orca does
> 
> 
>     On 3/22/26 20:00, Nick Gawronski wrote:
>      > Hi, I just installed Forky and noticed that orca comes up as normal
>      > after the installation in mate but if I try to access just the
>     consoles
>      > I have no speech from speakup what so ever. This should be fixed as
>      > that could really be a mess for some users and orca is not the
>     best in
>      > terminal applications.
>      >
> 
>     Why according to you, Orca is not working in the terminal?
> 
>     I use Orca in the terminal on a daily bases without problem.
> 
>     -- 
>     John Doe
>