New member and two questions

[Chris Gilland]

Hello.  My name is Chris Gilland.  I'm 25 years old, and I live in 
Charlotte, North Carolina.  I am hoping to put Ubuntu on my laptop very 
shortly, but I have a few questions, and would very much appreciate some 
help.  I need to stress before asking my question one thing:  All of my 
life, I have been a Windows user, and am just now beginning to make the 
switch to Linux.  At first, I was a bit hesitant to give it a try, being 
that I have a bit of a slow learning disability cognitively speaking.  This 
means that reading documentation some times helps, but I have generally 
found that it is easier when someone step by step talks me through achieving 
the task I am trying to accomplish.  The reason I say this, before asking my 
questions, is because I really feel RTFM is an OK polacy, don't mistaken me, 
but, I feel this way:  you were once where I now am:  there was a time you 
knew almost literally nothing more than this is the power button.  Push it 
to boot.  OK, so I'm not that bad off, Smile, point is in all this jabber: 
I'm a newby by far, and when I say, by far, I do mean:  by far.  So keep 
that in mind.  Another thing I should stress, is I am visually impaired and 
thus require the use of the Orca screen reader with the Festival speech. 
OK, now that we have that outta the way: Here are my three questions.

1.  I have an Intel Pro Set Wireless onboard wireless chip.  (Well, ok, I 
guess it's a chip but any who...)  I do have an Intel Pro ethernet port as 
well, however, mobility is important for me.  I want to be able to go online 
from any room in my house, thus I need my wireless.  I know there is a 
program called gtk wifi but do I really need it?  I didn't ask, is it 
suggested to get, I said, is it *needed*  Again, I wanna keep this as simple 
as possible.  so the less I gotta install extra, the better.  Secondly, if 
Ubuntu will automatically let me connect without any extra packages etc. 
where do I need to go to do so.  I'd rather do this through the graffical 
interface than through a terminal window in a configuration file if 
possible.  If that isn't possible, then please be sure to be incredibly 
specific on what to do as configuration files are not my thing.  i know I'll 
have to get used to them, and I will, but remember I'm new at this.  For 
now, i just wanna get up and running.

2.  My second question is, As of now, I understand that Orca has no 
accessible support for Mozilla Firefox.  Remember:  I really don't prefer 
browsing in a terminal window.  I'd be willing to do it, if I could get 
links that's the l, i, n, k, s, browser, to work within the braille 
terminal.  For some reason though, I couldn't seem to get it to work when I 
had Ubuntu on the desktop machine I'm now using, so, is there a browser in 
the graffical interface that would actually at this time either work, or at 
least kind a sort a work with Orca?



3.  My final question is, in Evolution,the program used for e-mail, I was 
told that after hitting enter on an e-mail to open it, there was a keystroke 
I could then hit which would allow me to then use my arrow keys below my 
6pack and arrow up and down without having to use my Orca review commands. 
The person who told me about this couldn't remember though how to do it.  He 
said all he remembered was that you only have to do it one time.  After that 
you're in business.  Can someone tell me, as the way that I was doing it 
before was a major pain.  I Feel there has to be an easier way.

Thanks so much for your help.  Again, please, I'm a newby, so cut me some 
slack.  I really do wanna learn but I need to take it very slow and easy.


Chris.