Oh how cute, Robotman’s going to bore the fuck out of you by talking about Linux again!
Yes, This is a story about a Linux distribution called “Puppy Linux“. I’m not much of a 1337 H4XXÁ˜R when it comes to Linux, so I pretty much stick to distros that I can install and use with a GUI.
And now that all the non-techheads have gone away from this blog post I can go into geekier, techier detail.
If you look below, you will see how my hardware foiled my attempts to try Mint. That means I’ve pretty much stuck to the two Ubuntu variants I like best – Xubuntu and Lubuntu. I haven’t used actual Ubuntu for years and I doubt I ever will.
But that’s another rant. And the reason I use Puppy Linux on one of my machines has to do with the rather low specs on that netbook. Ya see, it’s an HP Mini Note 2133. That was made back in early 2008, and even Lubuntu runs like molasses on it. I’m sure Gentoo or Arch would run plenty fast, but I’m a computer user, not a masochist.
(Zing!)
Anyhoo, the thing I love about running Puppy on that netbook is that I can run it from the SD card that fits snugly and hidden away inside a slot in the side of it. And without even installing GRUB on the hard drive, I can choose which OS to boot by pressing F9 when the computer boots.
The hard drive contains Windows XP and some snazzy video game console emulators by the way. They all run just fine on the limited hardware, thanks for asking.
So when Puppy boots, it runs mostly in RAM like it’s supposed to, and it’s fast and lithe – even when running Firefox. Now I think I’ve mentioned text-to-speech on this blog before, but I’ll talk about it again. I like having stuff read to me. I dislike having to drag my eyes across a computer screen, because I actually find it easier and more enjoyable to absorb information and stupid jokes on Reddit when I hear them as opposed to when I see them.
So text-to-speech is a vital part of my computing experience. Sadly, text to speech in Linux is shit. It’s worse than that, actually. It shit with hot radioactive shrapnel mixed in and served up by Satan himself.
That’s pretty much one of the only reasons I still keep Windows XP running in Virtualbox on this computer… for a Windows text to speech program that instantly reads whatever gets copied to the clipboard. Handy for proofreading too.
Seeing as how my little underpowered netbook couldn’t possibly handle running a full OS inside Virtualbox, or even a windows application running in Wine for that matter, I had tried to install one of the admittedly abysmal text-to-speech applications for Linux that I had found over the years.
That was why I chose the version of Puppy Linux that had access to the Ubuntu suppositories repositories. But when I installed ESpeak and ESpeak GUI and all their dependencies… nothing happened. The application wouldn’t launch. I believe I’ve made fun of ESpeak before, and how it sounds like a drunken Scottish C3PO.
Ah, my timeless, timeless art.
But if I couldn’t even have that… ugh.
But wait! (Is it me or is this blog post really long and rambling?) I actually needed to use my netbook for reading Reddit and news and Fembot Central and other stuff because I had a major backup project going on and it was taking WAY FUCKING LONG. like, WAY way fucking long.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to backup about 5 TB worth of data over USB 2.0?
So, both this computer (my awesome Commodore 64 replica) and my laptop were busy. And my gaming PC – the cheapie off-lease that was cheaper to buy again than a replacement motherboard – was in use with some video games.
So the netbook had to be called into action.
Hallelujah! An addon for Firefox that will read text. Right out of the browser! It still kind of sounds like crap, it isn’t very customizable, and it’s completely derailed every time it comes across an ampersand, but it’s text to speech and it works.
Best of all, it’s just as many steps as my preferred method with my windows text-to-speech program.
It’s not perfect, but it sure made my days (yes, days… do you have any idea… oh… I covered that already…) more enjoyable as I played video games and read news and stuff while I should have cleaned up the basement like I told myself I was going to do.
Meh.
Anyway, here is one of the bad reviews this Firefox addon got:
Are all Crazy?! this program no is good!!
Can’t argue with that. Actually, I did have a bit of trouble with it early on. I had to start Firefox in “safe mode” and uninstall the addon and then reinstall it for some reason. Meh. I wish I had more money, I’d actually donate to the author because I genuinely find things like this to be useful.
Okay, I’m done talking now. I’m going to proofread this with the “Text to Voice” addon on my netbook.