can speakup be used in bsd?

[Doug Sutherland]

What is Linux is actually only the kernel, the rest of what 
makes a distro is all GNU tools, starting with the toolchain
that makes a kernel: compiler, assember, binutils, glibc, etc,
and the things make it a unix system: tcp/ip, dns, shells, 
parsers, etc, and all of the other add-ons. What makes
one distro different from another is the choice of which 
programs are included, how the file system hierarchy is
laid out, how the init scripts work, how the install and 
and configuration works. 

BSD is a similar situation but the design of the kernel is
exteremely different, how device drivers are included is
also very different, but its based on the same set of GNU
tools, similar toolchain, similar utilities etc. The difference
between the BSD variants is similar to the difference 
between linux distros. People split off from the original
berkeley unix and started making different distros and 
focusing on different areas, with somewhat different 
philosophies as to how things should be done.

Regarding security, BSD is probably more secure only
because there is less of it around, therefore less reason
for hackers to attack it, same as mac. 

Can speakup work with BSD, no. The source code 
patches the kernel, and the kernels are completely 
different. Something exactly like speakup could be 
written for BSD but I think most of the code would 
not be portable at all.

  -- Doug