Initial impressions of 11.10

[Nolan Darilek]

Oh, and something else I noticed just now that's probably worth mentioning:

I installed Unity from the accessibility PPA. Before doing that, I'm 
pretty sure the extra, non-app menu items in the bar spoke (I.e. for 
wireless/network control, sound, etc.) Now after upgrading they no 
longer speak. This seems like it might be a regression in the a11y PPA.

Thanks.


On 10/15/2011 10:46 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
> Just slapped this onto an old netbook I'm trying to revive. Here are 
> my initial impressions.
>
> I love the new way to run accessibility on the live CD. Great! I just 
> wish it also worked from the instance that gets run when you choose to 
> try without installing. Running manually works, but consistency would 
> rule.
>
> Had some issues with the install, but those weren't accessibility 
> related.
>
> My new installation didn't come up talking. I had to run Orca 
> manually, enable accessibility and log back out and in. My expectation 
> was that it'd come up talking as soon as I logged in.
>
> Along similar lines, Orca doesn't run automatically. I have to start 
> it manually. This despite my impression that the screen reader toggle 
> in the accessibility settings screen is enabled. I can't seem to find 
> a "Run Orca on startup" option in Orca's preferences anymore.
>
> Unity seems quite keyboard accessible. Going to need time to get used 
> to the many new commands.
>
> My timezone is incorrect and I can't figure out how to reset it. In 
> Time and Date I see a text area containing the location New York, but 
> I can't figure a way to set this to anything local to me. I tried 
> entering "Chicago" since that's usually the timezone I choose, but 
> that doesn't seem to take.
>
> Lots of widgets seem to be misrepresented as checkboxes. In 
> particular, many menu items appear this way.
>
> I'm not clear on how to navigate some of the panels in Unity 2D. 
> They're also said to be inaccessible even though I did get some 
> feedback from Orca at one point.
>
> All notifications speak "Notification: notify-osd". I have to look at 
> .cache/notify-osd.log to see what I missed.
>
> While this is a long list of negatives, I'm quite impressed at how 
> accessible things are after such a major change. I probably won't put 
> 11.10 on my main machine for now, but I'm enjoying playing with it on 
> the netbook.
>