Massive patch failures

[Cheryl Homiak]

I hope you all will be patient with me; this is my first time to compile a
kernel.  I have debian.  I downloaded the tar.gz file of linux-2.2.19 as
well as speakup-0.10a.tar.gz.  I currently am running 2.2.17 with
speakup-0.09 just for reference.  Making sure there was no linux tree in
/usr/src I moved both files from my home directory to /usr/src and
unpacked them.  After reading the files with
instructions--also am referring to the howto--I did a cd into
speakup-0.10a and typed ./install.      It appears that 8 out of 8 hunks
failed first and then later--I assume the next step--3 out of 5 failed.
This would lead me to believe that I am missing something glaringly
obvious and, no matter how embarrassing, I would like it if somebody
pointed out to me what I have neglected to do.  Oh, I also removed
the linux and speakup-0.10a directories and tried again with linux
and speakup-0.10, unpacking all over again.  Exactly the same thing
happened as before.
Thanks for any help.

                              Cheryl