Vinux is a Linux distribution based on Debian, designed especially for visually impaired users.

Vinux provides a screen-reader, full screen magnification and support for Braille displays out of the box. It can be run from the Live CD without making any changes to your hard drive. If you like it you can install it to a USB thumbdrive or to your hard drive either alongside Windows or as a complete replacement for it. There is also a virtual version available which can run Vinux as a guest operating system using VMWare Player on Windows. The main screen-reader/magnifier is called Orca and the Braille display is supported by Brltty. There is also a secondary screen-reader installed called Speakup, which is a console based screen-reader. This is aimed at more advanced users but can also provide a useful backup in the event of any problems. Vinux provides a wide range of open source software including an internet browser, a file manager, a text editor and various multimedia applications. Vinux is designed to be a completely secure  modern desktop system for all the family, visually impaired and sighted alike.


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What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· The main difference between this and the recently released Vinux 3.2 is that by default it boots with Pulseaudio running in 'user' mode rather than 'system' mode.
· This prevents pulseaudio from crashing at boot on a small number of sound cards, but it means that speakup is not available from the live CD or immediately after installation. However there are now two simple commands for switching Pulseaudio from user to system mode in conjunction with a reboot of the machine.
· This version also includes an accessible zenity front end for Unetbootin which allows users to install Vinux to a USB pendrive with persistent storage. Users who have already installed Vinux 3.2 can upgrade to this version quite easily without having to reinstall.
· There are two new applications included in 3.2.1, usbinstall and cdburn. These are accessible scripts for installing Vinux to a USB pendrive and burning a CD/DVD and checking the md5sum of the burnt CD/DVD. They are still prototype scripts with no error checking so I have not included them in the menus yet, they must be launched by pressing alt+f2 and then typing usbinstall or cdburn - then pressing enter.