[coLinux-users] Introduction and a few questions

[Zachary K. <zk...@zk...>]

Hello,
     First a few words of introduction on my part: I'm a blind computer
user who has had an interest in Linux ever since I first found out about
it some six or so years back.
The main problem I've had with Linux is that for the most part the
hardware I have doesn't make using speech synthesizers and the like to
do independant installations very easy.
My computer doesn't come with a serial port--and the only synthesizer I
have that would let me do that needs one.  USB to serial doesn't seem to
work, etc.  I settled on using CoLinux and using my existing Windows
screen reader with the NT console--for some reason the FLTK doesn't work
so well with it, I don't know why.
     Now to my questions...I have taken a real liking to ArchLinux: it's
simple, and very useable for what I'd like so far.  
However, the problem comes when upgrading: the latest upgrades recommend
that I use kernel 2.6.17 to take advantage of UDev support.  I can work
around this, but really I wonder if there's an advantage to using it?
If so...Is it possible to use 2.6.18 with CoLinux, and if that's
possible how would I compile it, and patch it?  Would an initrd be
enough?
Thanks in advance,
Zack.