back to article After a clean and inclusive Ubuntu-based desktop? Elementary, dear user

The latest release of Elementary OS, version 7.1, is out, based on Ubuntu 22.04.3. We took it for a quick spin. Elementary OS 7.1 shares the same name, "Horus", as 7.0, which we looked at in February, and it's not radically different from that release. Elementary OS 7.1 has a very clean, minimalist desktop, with a panel, dock …

  1. Lee D Silver badge

    "It's the first distro we've seen in which the installation program talks to you."

    Slackware was doing this 20+ years ago - Slackware 8.0 at minimum, back in 2001.

    It was called Slackware Speak.

    1. Johannesburgel12

      I was about to post this too. Several Distros have and have had speech synthesis in the installer.

      1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        [Author here]

        > I was about to post this too. Several Distros have and have had speech synthesis in the installer.

        Self-announcing by default?

        I have installed a *lot* of Linux distros over the last 25+ years, and this is the first general-purpose distro that ever spoke to me unbidden.

        Yes, if you know it's there you can invoke Orca on a few. And of course there are distros like ARIADNE (and the former Blinux) which are aimed at users with visual impairments; I've installed several, and I can just about drive Windows via a screen reader *alone* -- meaning with no monitor connected.

        But this is *not* a special-purpose or adapted distro.

    2. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      [Author here]

      > Slackware 8.0 at minimum, back in 2001.

      I installed, or rather TBPH _tried_ to install, Slackware 2. I installed Slackware 15 this year, both in VMs and on bare metal, both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.

      It did not speak.

      I am sure it would be possible to invoke a screen reader, but AIR the installer doesn't even support a mouse, let alone a sound card. Since it's text-only it might actually be quite well-suited to this, but it need some extra steps.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        2 didn't have it.

        15 doesn't have it except in legacy support.

        You have to have a Speak-enabled ISO, and nobody said that was the default.

  2. lamp

    Brilliant

    I've been using 7.0 for a while now. I'm going to try this release.

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