hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
|
|
Hi Kendell,
Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list!
CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others (you can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so I haven't looked into other formats with it. Just looking at the features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats.
I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm afraid.
I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot more autonomously than it used to. Sometimes it is worth double checking you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for audio and video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's website.
I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be your processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you seem to have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything happening immediately prior to it crashing? I did a google search on the filename and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's evidently not overly common.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works fairly well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular browser with NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth keeping Chrome around just for the odd website that works better with one than the other. Internet Explorer still works and still comes with Windows, even Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the new browser "Edge", though personally, I'd still stick with one of the others for the most part.
If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS Office works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a standalone one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice is a full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/
I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything else you need help or a recommendation on. Kind regards
Quentin.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 2:04 PM, coffeekingms@... <coffeekingms@...> wrote: hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux,
specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many
reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list,
but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less
prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what
speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could
point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software
to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and
if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's,
since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could
rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for
mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything.
Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if
possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video
and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to
manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc
files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory
and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I
may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc
software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and
last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming
spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software.
I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible.
I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such.
Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's
torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and
fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If
these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck
screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free
driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it.
Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be
nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't
want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my
own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that
say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes
with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to
pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install
extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there
good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after
being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows
user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
-- Quentin Christensen Training Material Developer
|
|
It appears you want to convert mp3 files into other
formats. If you convert mp3 into other compressed formats such as ogg, you
are compressing one compressed format with another. You will loose sound
quality if you do so.
Gene
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message -----
hi all I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but
I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows
10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear
since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just
friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software
they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping
you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if
possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll
provide a list. A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd
databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook
cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it
could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care
for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for
everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists
if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the
video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have
to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b,
etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format
factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus
so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the
htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora
and last.fm? I
don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and
pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q
bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software
for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer
using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other
linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program
to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is
experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and
I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that
would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version
would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I
don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing
my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites
that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but
comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you
to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often
install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are
there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows
after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time
windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help
again. Thanks Kendell
Clark
|
|
Hi, If you were much of a command-line Linux user, you might want to check out Windows 10 bash: http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/YoutubeDLG is what I use for my videos. You can set some options in preferences according to whether you want to convert to audio and keep the video. You can also put custom command line parameters into its configuration which will get passed to youtube-dl directly. Personally, I keep the "convert to audio" checkbox unchecked, and add a -x to the command line parameters so that the original format gets preserved in the case of aac or opus audio. This depends entirely on whether you want to keep the video though. CDex is definitely good, though I don't know if it's updated for Windows 10. It was the first ripper I ever used and worked until I decided to just use GoldWave's internal converter. For torrenting, I use UTorrent, but a much older version (3.2.1). I don't know off hand where one can download this, so if you trust a google search more than a random stranger on a mailing list, feel free to find your own download. However, this is my copy and it's running well on two of my machines: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1689280/software/utorrent.exeA few people talked about driveragent being good, but it's not free. However, I was told it was 30 to 40 dollars for up to 10 machines. If that's your thing, give it a try. I'm also told the free version will tell you which drivers you need, but will not download them automatically. Don't quote me on either of those things. I'm sure people out here have good suggestions of audio converters. I don't personally have any, as I once again use GoldWave's batch converter most of the time. If I don't, I use the one built into Foobar2000, which also works well in certain cases. Good luck. Feel free to share any discoveries you make as well. Simon
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On 2017-02-14 19:04, coffeekingms@... wrote: hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
|
|
hi
Thanks for all your suggestions. I just installed the cdex software using the link you provided. As a warning to all of you, if you do install this software, you might need sighted help to uncheck the option to install recommended software, because there
seems to be no accssible way to decline it. If you do install the cd ripper as it wants, you'll get the following additional software
avast antivirus
bite fence antimalware
chromium
advanced pc care
stack player
and your homepage will be set to yahoo web search in your default browser. I'm still puzzling over how to remove avast, since I can't seem to click or simulate a left click on the uninstall button, NVDA can't seem to route the mouse pointer to the uninstall
button using the caps lock plus kp devide shortcut, but the others were easily removed. Despite all of this, I like cdex. I don't like the sneaky bundling of software, and I'm rather shocked that open source software would stoop to such a tactic. I'm not
annoyed at anyone hear though, I want to make that clear but at the extra installations. I am going to install chrome and try it out, since I did like chromium in the few minutes I played around with it.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/14/2017 9:32 PM, Quentin Christensen wrote:
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Hi Kendell,
Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list!
CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others (you can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so I haven't looked into other formats with it. Just
looking at the features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats.
I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm afraid.
I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot more autonomously than it used to.
Sometimes it is worth double checking you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for audio and video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's website.
I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be your processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you seem to have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything happening immediately prior to it crashing? I
did a google search on the filename and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's evidently not overly common.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works fairly well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular browser with NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth keeping Chrome around just for the odd website that
works better with one than the other. Internet Explorer still works and still comes with Windows, even Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the new browser "Edge", though personally, I'd still stick with one of the others for the most part.
If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS Office works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a standalone one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice
is a full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/
I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything else you need help or a recommendation on.
Kind regards
Quentin.
|
|
To uninstall Avast, use JAWS, you can use a JAWS
demo. then uninstall it from programs and features. Clidck the
remove button with the space bar. When you do so dialogs will come up or
something like dialogs. they won't be quite like dialogs because they will
be the Avast installer. Tab through them and see what you want to
do. I'm not sure just what you will find or if you will come across
anything you might need help with because of not being spoken.
Also, get the unchecky utility. It doesn't
know about all unwanted programs installed with a lot of free software but it
will alert you to a good deal and allow you to avoid the installation. You
may not have an accessible way to avoid such installations so uncheckie is more
important to blind users.
Gene
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 10:51 PM
Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software
selections
hi
Thanks for all your suggestions. I just installed the cdex software using the
link you provided. As a warning to all of you, if you do install this software,
you might need sighted help to uncheck the option to install recommended
software, because there seems to be no accssible way to decline it. If you do
install the cd ripper as it wants, you'll get the following additional
software
avast antivirus
bite fence antimalware
chromium
advanced pc care
stack player
and your homepage will be set to yahoo web search in your default browser.
I'm still puzzling over how to remove avast, since I can't seem to click or
simulate a left click on the uninstall button, NVDA can't seem to route
the mouse pointer to the uninstall button using the caps lock plus kp
devide shortcut, but the others were easily removed. Despite all of this, I like
cdex. I don't like the sneaky bundling of software, and I'm rather shocked that
open source software would stoop to such a tactic. I'm not annoyed at
anyone hear though, I want to make that clear but at the extra installations. I
am going to install chrome and try it out, since I did like chromium in the few
minutes I played around with it.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/14/2017 9:32 PM, Quentin Christensen
wrote:
Hi Kendell,
Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list!
CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others
(you can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so
I haven't looked into other formats with it. Just looking at the
features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats.
I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm
afraid.
I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what
they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they
solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot
more autonomously than it used to. Sometimes it is worth double checking
you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for audio and
video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's
website.
I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be your
processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you seem to
have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything happening
immediately prior to it crashing? I did a google search on the filename
and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's evidently not
overly common.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works fairly
well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular browser with
NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth keeping Chrome around
just for the odd website that works better with one than the other.
Internet Explorer still works and still comes with Windows, even Windows
10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the new browser "Edge",
though personally, I'd still stick with one of the others for the most
part.
If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS Office
works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a standalone
one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice
is a full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/
I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all
the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything else
you need help or a recommendation on.
Kind regards
Quentin.
|
|
hi
Thanks for your help. I tried to install the older version of utorrent from your link provided, but got an error. The exact error was that the file was no longer available, dropbox 460. Restricted content. I'm not sure exactly what it means but it sounds as if dropbox has taken the file down. I'll see if I can find an older version of utorrent. I did install the latest version, and it's crap. It's been taken over with adds and is extremely slow, and not that accessible. I was using deluge on linux, and while it is available on windows it's not accessible hear. Probably the age old gtk apps not being accessible in windows deal. I'll give youtube dl gui more of a chance before I remove it. I haven't used audacity much, but I pre installed it in sonar as the best accessible audio editor for linux, goldwave and reaper don't run on linux and wouldn't be accessible if they did, so I'm familiar with it.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On 2/14/2017 10:18 PM, Simon Jaeger wrote: Hi,
If you were much of a command-line Linux user, you might want to check out Windows 10 bash:
http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/
YoutubeDLG is what I use for my videos. You can set some options in preferences according to whether you want to convert to audio and keep the video. You can also put custom command line parameters into its configuration which will get passed to youtube-dl directly. Personally, I keep the "convert to audio" checkbox unchecked, and add a -x to the command line parameters so that the original format gets preserved in the case of aac or opus audio. This depends entirely on whether you want to keep the video though.
CDex is definitely good, though I don't know if it's updated for Windows 10. It was the first ripper I ever used and worked until I decided to just use GoldWave's internal converter.
For torrenting, I use UTorrent, but a much older version (3.2.1). I don't know off hand where one can download this, so if you trust a google search more than a random stranger on a mailing list, feel free to find your own download. However, this is my copy and it's running well on two of my machines:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1689280/software/utorrent.exe
A few people talked about driveragent being good, but it's not free. However, I was told it was 30 to 40 dollars for up to 10 machines. If that's your thing, give it a try. I'm also told the free version will tell you which drivers you need, but will not download them automatically. Don't quote me on either of those things.
I'm sure people out here have good suggestions of audio converters. I don't personally have any, as I once again use GoldWave's batch converter most of the time. If I don't, I use the one built into Foobar2000, which also works well in certain cases.
Good luck. Feel free to share any discoveries you make as well.
Simon
On 2017-02-14 19:04, coffeekingms@... wrote:
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
|
|
Dennis L <dennisl1982@...>
Where do I get uncheckiefrom? Thanks.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io] On Behalf Of Gene Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 12:05 AM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software selections To uninstall Avast, use JAWS, you can use a JAWS demo. then uninstall it from programs and features. Clidck the remove button with the space bar. When you do so dialogs will come up or something like dialogs. they won't be quite like dialogs because they will be the Avast installer. Tab through them and see what you want to do. I'm not sure just what you will find or if you will come across anything you might need help with because of not being spoken. Also, get the unchecky utility. It doesn't know about all unwanted programs installed with a lot of free software but it will alert you to a good deal and allow you to avoid the installation. You may not have an accessible way to avoid such installations so uncheckie is more important to blind users. ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 10:51 PM Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software selections hi Thanks for all your suggestions. I just installed the cdex software using the link you provided. As a warning to all of you, if you do install this software, you might need sighted help to uncheck the option to install recommended software, because there seems to be no accssible way to decline it. If you do install the cd ripper as it wants, you'll get the following additional software avast antivirus bite fence antimalware chromium advanced pc care stack player and your homepage will be set to yahoo web search in your default browser. I'm still puzzling over how to remove avast, since I can't seem to click or simulate a left click on the uninstall button, NVDA can't seem to route the mouse pointer to the uninstall button using the caps lock plus kp devide shortcut, but the others were easily removed. Despite all of this, I like cdex. I don't like the sneaky bundling of software, and I'm rather shocked that open source software would stoop to such a tactic. I'm not annoyed at anyone hear though, I want to make that clear but at the extra installations. I am going to install chrome and try it out, since I did like chromium in the few minutes I played around with it. Thanks Kendell Clark On 2/14/2017 9:32 PM, Quentin Christensen wrote: Hi Kendell, Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list! CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others (you can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so I haven't looked into other formats with it. Just looking at the features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats. I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm afraid. I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot more autonomously than it used to. Sometimes it is worth double checking you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for audio and video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's website. I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be your processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you seem to have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything happening immediately prior to it crashing? I did a google search on the filename and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's evidently not overly common. Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works fairly well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular browser with NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth keeping Chrome around just for the odd website that works better with one than the other. Internet Explorer still works and still comes with Windows, even Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the new browser "Edge", though personally, I'd still stick with one of the others for the most part. If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS Office works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a standalone one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice is a full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/ I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything else you need help or a recommendation on. On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 2:04 PM, coffeekingms@... <coffeekingms@...> wrote: hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
-- Quentin Christensen Training Material Developer
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I would suggest extracting to wav first. winlame at http://winlame.sourceforge.net though quite old still works. The codecs are not up to date but the conversion works for most things.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On 15/02/2017 5:09 p.m., Gene wrote: It appears you want to convert mp3 files into other formats. If you convert mp3 into other compressed formats such as ogg, you are compressing one compressed format with another. You will loose sound quality if you do so.
Gene ----- Original Message -----
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
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Simon,
Re CDex,
The latest stable version is 1.82, released on 21st December 2016. It definitely works on Windows 10 although it still has much the same interface it has had for about as long as I've used it.
Regards
Quentin.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 3:18 PM, Simon Jaeger <simon@...> wrote: Hi,
If you were much of a command-line Linux user, you might want to check out Windows 10 bash:
http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/
YoutubeDLG is what I use for my videos. You can set some options in preferences according to whether you want to convert to audio and keep the video. You can also put custom command line parameters into its configuration which will get passed to youtube-dl directly. Personally, I keep the "convert to audio" checkbox unchecked, and add a -x to the command line parameters so that the original format gets preserved in the case of aac or opus audio. This depends entirely on whether you want to keep the video though.
CDex is definitely good, though I don't know if it's updated for Windows 10. It was the first ripper I ever used and worked until I decided to just use GoldWave's internal converter.
For torrenting, I use UTorrent, but a much older version (3.2.1). I don't know off hand where one can download this, so if you trust a google search more than a random stranger on a mailing list, feel free to find your own download. However, this is my copy and it's running well on two of my machines:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1689280/software/utorrent.exe
A few people talked about driveragent being good, but it's not free. However, I was told it was 30 to 40 dollars for up to 10 machines. If that's your thing, give it a try. I'm also told the free version will tell you which drivers you need, but will not download them automatically. Don't quote me on either of those things.
I'm sure people out here have good suggestions of audio converters. I don't personally have any, as I once again use GoldWave's batch converter most of the time. If I don't, I use the one built into Foobar2000, which also works well in certain cases.
Good luck. Feel free to share any discoveries you make as well.
Simon
On 2017-02-14 19:04, coffeekingms@... wrote:
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux,
specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many
reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list,
but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less
prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what
speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could
point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software
to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and
if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's,
since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could
rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for
mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything.
Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if
possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video
and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to
manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc
files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory
and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I
may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc
software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and
last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming
spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software.
I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible.
I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such.
Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's
torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and
fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If
these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck
screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free
driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it.
Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be
nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't
want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my
own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that
say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes
with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to
pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install
extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there
good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after
being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows
user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
-- Quentin Christensen Training Material Developer
|
|
Eek! Sorry! I haven't installed from scratch for awhile clearly and didn't remember that or I definitely would have warned you!
Quentin.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 3:51 PM, coffeekingms@... <coffeekingms@...> wrote:
hi
Thanks for all your suggestions. I just installed the cdex software using the link you provided. As a warning to all of you, if you do install this software, you might need sighted help to uncheck the option to install recommended software, because there
seems to be no accssible way to decline it. If you do install the cd ripper as it wants, you'll get the following additional software
avast antivirus
bite fence antimalware
chromium
advanced pc care
stack player
and your homepage will be set to yahoo web search in your default browser. I'm still puzzling over how to remove avast, since I can't seem to click or simulate a left click on the uninstall button, NVDA can't seem to route the mouse pointer to the uninstall
button using the caps lock plus kp devide shortcut, but the others were easily removed. Despite all of this, I like cdex. I don't like the sneaky bundling of software, and I'm rather shocked that open source software would stoop to such a tactic. I'm not
annoyed at anyone hear though, I want to make that clear but at the extra installations. I am going to install chrome and try it out, since I did like chromium in the few minutes I played around with it.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/14/2017 9:32 PM, Quentin Christensen wrote:
Hi Kendell,
Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list!
CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others (you can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so I haven't looked into other formats with it. Just
looking at the features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats.
I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm afraid.
I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot more autonomously than it used to.
Sometimes it is worth double checking you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for audio and video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's website.
I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be your processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you seem to have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything happening immediately prior to it crashing? I
did a google search on the filename and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's evidently not overly common.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works fairly well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular browser with NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth keeping Chrome around just for the odd website that
works better with one than the other. Internet Explorer still works and still comes with Windows, even Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the new browser "Edge", though personally, I'd still stick with one of the others for the most part.
If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS Office works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a standalone one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice
is a full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/
I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything else you need help or a recommendation on.
Kind regards
Quentin.
-- Quentin Christensen Training Material Developer
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|
hi
No worries, I removed all the unwanted bits. On the bright side, I absolutely love chrome! I haven't been this excited about a browser since I switched away from internet explorer and to firefox, about a year before I switched to linux this was. It's blindingly
fast, even on sites that would slow firefox to a crawl. I tested on best buy and hsn, two of the worst sites with firefox and it worked like a charm. The only caveat is that if I ever do install linux again, I won't be able to use it because the linux screen
reader, called orca, won't read chrome or chromium. Joanmeri diggs says she can't add it until google makes some changes to make it possible, although NVDA managed somehow. Don't tell her that though, I did that once and her reply was something like fine then,
use windows lol.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/15/2017 3:14 AM, Quentin Christensen wrote:
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Eek! Sorry! I haven't installed from scratch for awhile clearly and didn't remember that or I definitely would have warned you!
Quentin.
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|
Glad to hear CDex is still being updated, but I definitely feel
your pain on the annoyingly inaccessible installers. The problem
is that the CDex developers can do absolutely nothing about it,
because the installer is created by a third party developer. I
have managed to get NVDA to uncheck those options in the past, but
I now don't remember how. Something about golden cursor and
simulated mouse movement. Also, while we're on the subject, did
you ever try switching to object review and doing an NVDA+enter on
the uninstall button? No point installing a whole JAWS demo if you
can make it work another way. If you route the mouse with mouse
tracking enabled, and you don't hear the name of the button
spoken, it is possible that NVDA doesn't actually know where the
button is. This can sometimes happen if you're using object
navigation keystrokes but you're in screen review mode, for
instance.
It looks like Dropbox has decided that my link to a piece of free
software is in fact a violation of copyright law. Fantastic
logical deduction. I put UTorrent 3.2.1 in an encrypted zip file.
The password is utorrent:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1689280/software/utorrent.zip
On 2017-02-15 1:12, Quentin Christensen
wrote:
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Simon,
Re CDex,
The latest stable version is 1.82, released on 21st
December 2016. It definitely works on Windows 10 although it
still has much the same interface it has had for about as long
as I've used it.
Regards
Quentin.
|
|
Sukil Etxenike <sukiletxe@...>
Hi Kendell,
Sorry to hear about your resignation from Sonar. Hope the situation improves over time.
For ripping CDs, you can also use Foobar 2000, which is a music player (though it extracts audio from videos, too).
There is a CLI version of youtube-dl that works on Windows too (standalone .exe file).
For installing software with no other stuff, I suggest you take a look at ninite.org , which will install the software you choose from their selection of <100 programs. To update it, you just rerun the installer. They even offer a section for accessible software, and offer to install NVDA.
Also, you may like chocolatey.org . Chocolatey is a open source (though it also offers pro versions)command-line package manager for Windows. Be aware though: like in Linux, sometimes the software you install with it may not be up to date (the NVDA there is from 2014 for example). But it does an excellent job of not installing additional things.
For Portable Applications, the most popular one is Portable Apps. You can either download the platform and "install" the portable software you want from there, or download the standalone portable apps.
Regards,
Sukil
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
El 15/02/2017 a las 4:04, coffeekingms@... escribió: hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
|
|
how do we know ninite.org is not spiware?
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sukil Etxenike via Groups.Io" <sukiletxe@...> To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 4:34 AM Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software selections Hi Kendell,
Sorry to hear about your resignation from Sonar. Hope the situation improves over time.
For ripping CDs, you can also use Foobar 2000, which is a music player (though it extracts audio from videos, too).
There is a CLI version of youtube-dl that works on Windows too (standalone .exe file).
For installing software with no other stuff, I suggest you take a look at ninite.org , which will install the software you choose from their selection of <100 programs. To update it, you just rerun the installer. They even offer a section for accessible software, and offer to install NVDA.
Also, you may like chocolatey.org . Chocolatey is a open source (though it also offers pro versions)command-line package manager for Windows. Be aware though: like in Linux, sometimes the software you install with it may not be up to date (the NVDA there is from 2014 for example). But it does an excellent job of not installing additional things.
For Portable Applications, the most popular one is Portable Apps. You can either download the platform and "install" the portable software you want from there, or download the standalone portable apps.
Regards,
Sukil
El 15/02/2017 a las 4:04, coffeekingms@... escribió:
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
|
|
Sukil Etxenike <sukiletxe@...>
Well, it is not detected by virustotal, nor by my local antivirus, and I've ran it four or five times.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
El 15/02/2017 a las 11:34, Isaac escribió: how do we know ninite.org is not spiware? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sukil Etxenike via Groups.Io" <sukiletxe@...> To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 4:34 AM Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software selections
Hi Kendell,
Sorry to hear about your resignation from Sonar. Hope the situation improves over time.
For ripping CDs, you can also use Foobar 2000, which is a music player (though it extracts audio from videos, too).
There is a CLI version of youtube-dl that works on Windows too (standalone .exe file).
For installing software with no other stuff, I suggest you take a look at ninite.org , which will install the software you choose from their selection of <100 programs. To update it, you just rerun the installer. They even offer a section for accessible software, and offer to install NVDA.
Also, you may like chocolatey.org . Chocolatey is a open source (though it also offers pro versions)command-line package manager for Windows. Be aware though: like in Linux, sometimes the software you install with it may not be up to date (the NVDA there is from 2014 for example). But it does an excellent job of not installing additional things.
For Portable Applications, the most popular one is Portable Apps. You can either download the platform and "install" the portable software you want from there, or download the standalone portable apps.
Regards,
Sukil
El 15/02/2017 a las 4:04, coffeekingms@... escribió:
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
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hi
My resignation from sonar was mostly due to one of our developers, kyle brouhard, not the sonar community or the linux blind community itself. He's one of those free software phanatics, although he does have an android phone. Basically to shorten his opinion if it's not linux, it sucks. No exceptions, whatsoever. And I was getting more and more impressed with windows 10. I made the mistake of telling him and the fights never stopped after that. I was not allowed to like windows, microsoft is evil and people will realize that eventually and so on and so on. I just couldn't take it anymore. I might come back to linux at some point, but I need a nice long breather. I really like what microsoft has done with windows 10, in particular the weather app, which actually shows the weather for the very small town I live in, a small town in east texas called grand saline, which the weather app in linux couldn't find. The closest it got was 30 miles away. Also, there were some problematic bits of hardware that did work in linux but needed some packages which weren't part of most linux distros,and worked in windows. I just got used to things working, and eventually said life's too short, I want what works. This is *not* a linux bash fest, just one developer trying to tell me what I was and was not allowed to like. I'll probably get back into linux eventually, but in the meantime I want to sharpen my open source skills and improve NVDA, if I ever get that far.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On 2/15/2017 4:34 AM, Sukil Etxenike via Groups.Io wrote: Hi Kendell,
Sorry to hear about your resignation from Sonar. Hope the situation improves over time.
For ripping CDs, you can also use Foobar 2000, which is a music player (though it extracts audio from videos, too).
There is a CLI version of youtube-dl that works on Windows too (standalone .exe file).
For installing software with no other stuff, I suggest you take a look at ninite.org , which will install the software you choose from their selection of <100 programs. To update it, you just rerun the installer. They even offer a section for accessible software, and offer to install NVDA.
Also, you may like chocolatey.org . Chocolatey is a open source (though it also offers pro versions)command-line package manager for Windows. Be aware though: like in Linux, sometimes the software you install with it may not be up to date (the NVDA there is from 2014 for example). But it does an excellent job of not installing additional things.
For Portable Applications, the most popular one is Portable Apps. You can either download the platform and "install" the portable software you want from there, or download the standalone portable apps.
Regards,
Sukil
El 15/02/2017 a las 4:04, coffeekingms@... escribió:
hi all
I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from linux, specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time. There are many reasons why and I won't go into them hear since this is the wrong list, but the windows blind community is just friendlier and much much less prone to judge people based on what software they want to use, what speech voice they want to use and so on. I was hoping you guys could point me to some free as in price, and open source if possible, software to do the things I've gotten used to doing in linux. I'll provide a list.
A cd ripper, preferably one that can look up info on cd databases, and if such a thing exists, one that can look up data on audiobook cd's, since the ones available for linux can't. It would be nice if it could rip to opus or ogg vorbis files, preferably both, since I don't care for mp3 and use free to use media formats like ogg or opus for everything. Something that can download videos from youtube, entire playlists if possible. I've found youtube dl gui for this, but it leaves the video and audio tracks separate, instead of combining them so I have to manuallt delete them. An audio converter, so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc files into the formats I prefer to use. I've come across format factory and already wrote about it hear, but it doesn't seem to handle opus so I may need to use something else. I've just discovered kodi, the htpc software. Can it handle using services such as spotify, pandora and last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but I'd like to start, assuming spotify and pandora are still free to use. Accessible torrent software. I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is usable but not very accessible. I want torrent software for legal things, not the pirate bay and such. Even though I'm no longer using sonar I still want to support it's torrent seeds, as well as other linux distro torrents such as vinux and fedora. Is there a good free program to keep drivers up to date? If these are still needed. My computer is experiencing frequent bugcheck screens from something called amdkfb.sys, and I thought maybe a free driver updater would download an updated driver that would fix it. Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a pro version would be nice, and that can be run portable would be even better, but I don't want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these instead of doing my own research because I'm frequently lead around in circles. Sites that say a piece of software is free, when what they mean is free but comes with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and they want you to pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and often install extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome browser. Are there good ways of avoiding these kinds of things? I'm new to windows after being in linux for five years so I might as well be a first time windows user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to ask for this much help again.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
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You mean convert to wave from a compressed cformat
and then compress the wave file in another compressed format? That
accomplishes nothing. You lose sound quality regardless of whether you
first convert to wave. All you are doing is producing a wave file with the
compression characteristics in terms of the sound that were in the first
compressed format. Then you are compressing that file to another
compressed format. You loose the same amount of quality as though you
simply converted from one compressed format to another. If you really care
about the audio and listen on good or reasonably good reproduction equipment,
you should leave compressed files in their original compressed format.
Gene
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 11:57 PM
Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software
selections
I would suggest extracting to wav first. winlame at http://winlame.sourceforge.net though
quite old still works. The codecs are not up to date but the conversion works
for most things. On 15/02/2017 5:09 p.m., Gene wrote: > It
appears you want to convert mp3 files into other formats. If you convert
mp3 into other compressed formats such as ogg, you are compressing one
compressed format with another. You will loose sound quality if you do
so. > > Gene > ----- Original Message ----- > > hi
all > > I'm a bit ashamed to say this, but I've just switched from
linux, > specifically sonar gnu linux, to windows 10 full time.
There are many > reasons why and I won't go into them hear since
this is the wrong list, > but the windows blind community is just
friendlier and much much less > prone to judge people based on what
software they want to use, what > speech voice they want to use and so on.
I was hoping you guys could > point me to some free as in price, and open
source if possible, software > to do the things I've gotten used to doing
in linux. I'll provide a list. > > A cd ripper, preferably one that
can look up info on cd databases, and > if such a thing exists, one that
can look up data on audiobook cd's, > since the ones available for linux
can't. It would be nice if it could > rip to opus or ogg vorbis files,
preferably both, since I don't care for > mp3 and use free to use media
formats like ogg or opus for everything. > Something that can download
videos from youtube, entire playlists if > possible. I've found youtube dl
gui for this, but it leaves the video > and audio tracks separate, instead
of combining them so I have to > manuallt delete them. An audio converter,
so I can convert mp3, m4b, etc > files into the formats I prefer to use.
I've come across format factory > and already wrote about it hear, but it
doesn't seem to handle opus so I > may need to use something else. I've
just discovered kodi, the htpc > software. Can it handle using services
such as spotify, pandora and > last.fm? I don't use any of these yet, but
I'd like to start, assuming > spotify and pandora are still free to use.
Accessible torrent software. > I've been usint q bittorrent, and it is
usable but not very accessible. > I want torrent software for legal
things, not the pirate bay and such. > Even though I'm no longer using
sonar I still want to support it's > torrent seeds, as well as other linux
distro torrents such as vinux and > fedora. Is there a good free program
to keep drivers up to date? If > these are still needed. My computer is
experiencing frequent bugcheck > screens from something called amdkfb.sys,
and I thought maybe a free > driver updater would download an updated
driver that would fix it. > Something that doesn't nag you to upgrade to a
pro version would be > nice, and that can be run portable would be even
better, but I don't > want to be picky. I'm only asking for all of these
instead of doing my > own research because I'm frequently lead around in
circles. Sites that > say a piece of software is free, when what they mean
is free but comes > with extra stuff, free trial, or not free at all and
they want you to > pay for it. Driver updaters that aren't accessible and
often install > extras, such as pc care, pc cleaners, and the chrome
browser. Are there > good ways of avoiding these kinds of things?
I'm new to windows after > being in linux for five years so I might as
well be a first time windows > user. Thanks for any help, I'll try not to
ask for this much help again. > > Thanks > > Kendell
Clark > > > > > > > > > > >
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The program didn't used to include unwanted
programs. I didn't install it today but I was curious what was displayed
in the preinstallation dialogs so I went through them up to the point where
other programs were offered. To the credit of the CDEX designers, you are
clearly told that other programs will be installed, though not in that
language. The installer doesn't try to sneak the other programs by without
you noticing as is often the case unless you are very carefull about
reading all installation dialogs thoroughly. But whatever means are
offered to opt out are not seen by screen-readers. I saw on the page where
you download the program that a portable version is offered. The portable,
version, according to a comment I've seen on another list, doesn't include any
potentially unwanted programs. Therefore, those wanting to use the newest
version of CDEX may try the portable version.
Gene
----- Original Message
-----
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 3:14 AM
Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software
selections
Eek! Sorry! I haven't installed from scratch for awhile
clearly and didn't remember that or I definitely would have warned you!
Quentin.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
hi
Thanks for all your suggestions. I just installed the cdex software using
the link you provided. As a warning to all of you, if you do install this
software, you might need sighted help to uncheck the option to install
recommended software, because there seems to be no accssible way to decline
it. If you do install the cd ripper as it wants, you'll get the following
additional software
avast antivirus
bite fence antimalware
chromium
advanced pc care
stack player
and your homepage will be set to yahoo web search in your default browser.
I'm still puzzling over how to remove avast, since I can't seem to click or
simulate a left click on the uninstall button, NVDA can't seem to route
the mouse pointer to the uninstall button using the caps lock plus kp
devide shortcut, but the others were easily removed. Despite all of this, I
like cdex. I don't like the sneaky bundling of software, and I'm rather
shocked that open source software would stoop to such a tactic. I'm not
annoyed at anyone hear though, I want to make that clear but at the extra
installations. I am going to install chrome and try it out, since I did like
chromium in the few minutes I played around with it.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/14/2017 9:32 PM, Quentin
Christensen wrote:
Hi Kendell,
Welcome to Windows, and to the NVDA list!
CDex is a popular CD ripper: http://cdex.mu/ It looks up freedb and others (you
can set the one you want). I must admit I always just rip to MP3 so I
haven't looked into other formats with it. Just looking at the
features, you can set it to use OGG, FLAC, AAC, WMA and other formats.
I'm not as familiar with downloading videos, or torrent programs I'm
afraid.
I tend to steer clear of driver downloaders - you just don't know what
they are downloading and I think most of them cause more problems than they
solve. Mostly I let Windows manage drivers and it does do this a lot
more autonomously than it used to. Sometimes it is worth double
checking you are using the manufacturer's driver, though, particularly for
audio and video drivers and in that case, I usually go to the manufacturer's
website.
I'm not sure about that file error you're getting. AMD will be
your processor and sys means it's a system file, possibly a driver, as you
seem to have guessed, but beyond that, I'm not sure. Is anything
happening immediately prior to it crashing? I did a google search on
the filename and got nothing (5 unrelated results) so whatever it is, it's
evidently not overly common.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, you'll actually find that it works
fairly well with NVDA if you do choose to install it. The popular
browser with NVDA has traditionally been Firefox, but it can be worth
keeping Chrome around just for the odd website that works better with one
than the other. Internet Explorer still works and still comes with
Windows, even Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10, we do support the
new browser "Edge", though personally, I'd still stick with one of the
others for the most part.
If you are after a word processor that isn't Microsoft Office (MS
Office works well with NVDA, but you asked about free), Jarte is a
standalone one: http://www.jarte.com/ otherwise, LibreOffice is a
full office suite: http://libreoffice.org/
I can't think of what else to recommend off the top of my head, but all
the best with your migration and do let us know if you encounter anything
else you need help or a recommendation on.
Kind regards
Quentin.
--
Quentin
Christensen Training Material Developer
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It may be that the Chrome developers have to make
changes. They have made a lot of additions or changes to make the Windows
version accessible. That doesn't mean they have done so with other
versions.
Gene
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 3:23 AM
Subject: Re: [nvda] new to windows, need help with software
selections
hi
No worries, I removed all the unwanted bits. On the bright side, I absolutely
love chrome! I haven't been this excited about a browser since I switched away
from internet explorer and to firefox, about a year before I switched to linux
this was. It's blindingly fast, even on sites that would slow firefox to a
crawl. I tested on best buy and hsn, two of the worst sites with firefox and it
worked like a charm. The only caveat is that if I ever do install linux again, I
won't be able to use it because the linux screen reader, called orca, won't read
chrome or chromium. Joanmeri diggs says she can't add it until google makes some
changes to make it possible, although NVDA managed somehow. Don't tell her that
though, I did that once and her reply was something like fine then, use windows
lol.
Thanks
Kendell Clark
On 2/15/2017 3:14 AM, Quentin Christensen
wrote:
Eek! Sorry! I haven't installed from scratch for
awhile clearly and didn't remember that or I definitely would have warned you!
Quentin.
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