I hope you all will be patient with me; this is my first time to compile a kernel. I have debian. I downloaded the tar.gz file of linux-2.2.19 as well as speakup-0.10a.tar.gz. I currently am running 2.2.17 with speakup-0.09 just for reference. Making sure there was no linux tree in /usr/src I moved both files from my home directory to /usr/src and unpacked them. After reading the files with instructions--also am referring to the howto--I did a cd into speakup-0.10a and typed ./install. It appears that 8 out of 8 hunks failed first and then later--I assume the next step--3 out of 5 failed. This would lead me to believe that I am missing something glaringly obvious and, no matter how embarrassing, I would like it if somebody pointed out to me what I have neglected to do. Oh, I also removed the linux and speakup-0.10a directories and tried again with linux and speakup-0.10, unpacking all over again. Exactly the same thing happened as before. Thanks for any help. Cheryl