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

[Albert Sten-Clanton]

I also got a serial port on my new machine.  I may not mind using software
speech once I get Speakup working, but I wouldn't want to lose the ability
to use hardware speech.  A couple of years ago, it was the hardware speech
that saved my butt when, for a reason I didn't know, software speech just
kicked out altogether in what was then my Arch installation.  I'd pprefer
that it be via usb, but I take what I can get.

Al 

-----Original Message-----
From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces at linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Tony
Baechler
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:26 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Are the days of hardware synths and speaking from boot
numbered?

Let me throw in my two cents here.  I just had a brand new server built in
August from scratch.  One of my primary requirements was a serial port. 
Yes, I had no problem finding one.  The trick seems to be to look for a
server motherboard.  I doubt if most assembly line desktops will come with
them anymore because they aren't usually necessary, but from poking around
on various sites while researching, there are still plenty of uses for
serial ports in servers.  So, to answer part of your question, I don't think
onboard serial ports are going away in the immediate future.  They will
continue to be harder to find, but there are still plenty of old devices out
there in the enterprise that need them.

To answer your second question, Debian Squeeze and the Squeeze live CD still
support hardware speech.  They use kernel 2.6.32 and I was able to do a
fresh install with my Trippletalk.  I had to spend many hours using the live
CD to try to recover my files from a damaged hard drive.  I mostly did this
with ssh, but I was still able to load the Speakup modules from the CD and I
had speech at the console.  For the curious, just burn and boot the live CD
as normal.  Press Enter when it spins down and wait for it to boot.  You
won't get any beep or other feedback.  After about 30 seconds, run "sudo
bash" to get to a shell.  Load the Speakup modules as normal.

To get to the subject of your message, it ultimately comes down to the
kernel developers.  There are still some USB synthesizers out there,
although software speech is now the popular trend.  I see very little
practical need for hardware speech in the near future, but I wish it was
still available in Wheezy.  I upgraded to Wheezy and kernel 3.2 and lost my
hardware speech.  I kept the 2.6.32 kernel to fall back on if necessary, but
that isn't a perfect solution and doesn't help with the 3.2 initrd.  I don't
see a practical way to get software speech in an initrd just due to the
overhead of sound drivers and ESpeak.  Wheezy does have software speech
built into the installer and I can verify that it works.  I guess the
ultimate advantage in ditching hardware speech is that there are a lot more
desktops with speakers and supported sound devices than there are with
serial ports, so anyone can plug in a USB stick and have a talking Linux
with minimal hassle.  In the end, that's probably more important, as much as
I really don't like giving up my good old hardware synthesizers.  It seems
that most Windows users use software speech now as well.

In conclusion, if you're really determined to have hardware speech on a new
box, it can be done with time and effort.  Then again, you can run DOS on
most boxes too if you really want.  It's just a matter of time before the
kernels change and you'll be stuck with software speech one way or the
other.  Eventually, Squeeze won't be supported and you won't have the
upgrade path available to Wheezy as you do now.  For now, you can install
Squeeze, upgrade to Wheezy and make sure to not install the 3.2 kernel.

On 12/11/2012 12:55 PM, Arthur Pirika wrote:
> 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?
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