3. Requirements

There are two items you need to run Speakup: a machine that can run Linux and a hardware speech synthesizer. Typically, any machine that can run Windows ™ 3.1 or better can run Linux. Speakup supports a number of hardware speech synthesizers, which are listed below with their Speakup keywords. These keywords are important to the Speakup installation process covered in the next sections.

Note: Speakup cannot run with a software speech synthesizer because there are no software synthesizers that load with the Linux kernel. However, Kirk Reiser, the creator of Speakup, is working on a kernel software synthesizer called TuxTalk. TuxTalk can be obtained from the Speakup CVS repository at http://www.linux-speakup.org.

Speakup works with versions 2.2.19, 2.2.20, and 2.4.x of the Linux kernel. In addition to a copy of the kernel, most users choose to install a particular Linux distribution, which includes the kernel, an installation mechanism of some kind, and a group of applications and tools. Although Speakup can be used with any distribution, most Speakup users select either the Debian, Red Hat, or Slackware distribution because these distributions have a text-based installation. If you already have one of these distributions installed, you can add Speakup to your Linux kernel, then recompile the kernel. If you have not already installed Linux, you can use Speakup-patched installation disks to install one of the above-mentioned distributions with speech. Installation is discussed in greater detail in the next section.