Vinux Virtual

Black background white text with poor taste joke about someone being blind.Vinux Virtual Screen Reader

What is Vinux?

Vinux is a customized version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution optimized to meet the needs of visually impaired users “out of the box”. It provides a screen-reader, full-screen magnification and support for braille displays as well as including a selection of popular open-source applications.

Check out the things we have here on this site for information. We are constantly working on adding to the site to help as much as possible.

Some of the many features in Vinux:

  • A built-in Screen Reader
  • A Full-Screen Magnifier
  • Support for Braille displays
  • Open Source
  • Multiple options for running the program
  • FREE!!
  • Used easily by sighted and visually impaired users alike
  • Developed for the visually impaired, by the visually impaired

Detailed Features and Benefits of the Vinux Virtual Edition.

By this time, you may be wondering why you should use the Vinux Virtual edition over a live/installed system. 
Here are some of the reasons why :

  • No damage to your system:  The vinux virtual edition can be run just as if it were installed to your local computer’s hard drive, without affecting windows in any way what so ever.  When using Wubi or installing Vinux to windows, compatibility issues have been known to arise with the grub boot-loader not detecting windows, people modifying files on their windows partition without realizing it, etc.  Because linux in general is an advanced operating system, mistakes can though not that easily be made without knowing it.
  • Everything just works:  The Vinux Virtual Edition is fully tested before it is released.  Because the VMWare virtual system supports virtually all types of modern hardware and operating system configurations, it is unlikely that you will run in to difficulties when using Vinux, even if you know nothing about visualization or VMWare.
  • Access to all devices:  You can easily connect external devices such as CD Drives, printers, pen drives, embossers, microphones, braille displays etc using the various ports on your computer to vinux.
  • Access to the internet and local network:  The virtual edition by default will use your internet connection if one is available on the host operating system, allowing you access to the internet just as if Vinux was directly connected to your Home network.  You will also be able to access files stored locally on your network on other computers.
  • Copy/paste:  Vinux by default allows the use of the copy/paste feature to transfer text between operating systems, by using standard clipboard commands.  Text that you paste will be accessible from within either Windows or Vinux.
  • Easy sharing of files:  Vinux allows you to share files between operating systems by using a folder which can be accessed from either windows or Vinux to store files in a centralized location.
  • No system downtime:  oops, so you’ve installed a program you wished you hadn’t.  No problem!  As long as you backup your VMWare files directory periodically, you can easily switch back to an old backup and simply run the VMWare image to have your system up and running again.
  • Never leave windows:  One of the major advantages is the fact that you do not have to shutdown/restart windows to use Vinux.  You can use vinux and if it crashes, simply reset the virtual machine and Vinux will restart.  If you have to switch back to windows for what ever reason, it just takes the press of a few keys.
  • No more broken systems:  You no longer have to be afraid to try out vinux to the full and wonder if something will break your system.  If something does break, simply role back to an earlier instance of vinux, and you have your system back in no time.
  • Support for 3D:  if your computers graphics card supports it, you can run tools such as magnifiers within Vinux in 3D, especially useful if you’re partially sited.

System Requirements

Below is a listing of the system requirements required to run Vinux.  I have listed both recommended and minimum system requirements.  You should be able to run vinux on most modern hardware, but if your system only meets the minimum system requirements, don’t worry!  All you will need to do is download the old VMWare player release from the VMWare Players and utilities section on the downloads page and use that to run Vinux Virtual edition ignoring all warnings to update.

Recommended system requirements:

  • Intel Pentium or AMD Dule/quad core processor.
  • 2 GB of ram.
  • 256 MB of graphics memory.
  • 60 GB or greater hard drive.
  • Windows XP, Vista or 7 or any version of linux supporting VMWare products.  Macs are also supported but a separate guide will be available for those wishing to run using a mac.

Minimum system requirements for the old player:

  • Intel Pentium 4 or AMD processor running at 2.8 GHZ.
  • 1 GB of ram.
  • A Graphics card supporting directX9.
  • 40 GB or greater hard drive.

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