A pestering voice from the computer is narrating my activity on the computer. The problem does not show up if one does not select "Launch GNOME services at startup". Paul
This is likely the orca package. In Xfce 4.10 you can pick and choose which of those gnome services you want to enable... but there's no way in 4.8. If you want to disable it, 'yum remove orca' ?
Thanks, Kevin. You are right: After removing orca, the reported problem seems to be vanished. Paul