Raspberry Pi

[Øyvind Lode]

Hi all:

I'm considering buying a raspberry pi just for the fun of playing with
a new device.
Which distro options do I have?
I need a working speakup with software speech.
On the x86 platform my distro of choice is Debian.
Will debian run on ARM and does the image contain speakup with
software speech as on x86?
And I assume there is several versions of the raspberry pi hardware?
I want the latest and greatest hardware.

Thanks,
Øyvind