Are the days of hardware synths and speaking from boot numbered?

[Arthur Pirika]

Hi,
I think the subject pretty much speaks for itself.         With serial 
synths, and especially serial ports getting harder to find, with the 
only serials synths still being made new are the venerable doubletalks, 
should work be ramped up on getting software speech, somehow at kernel 
level? I know there was a project working on this, but not much has been 
done on it for a while.
Related to this, I assume it's still possible to build speakup into the 
kernel, although most distributions package speakup as modules, thereby 
allowing messages from the moment of powerup?

thanks,
Arthur