Thanks to those who have answered my newbie questions so far. Unfortunately for me, answers to my questions promote other questions. :) If someone could recommend a good Linux primer that may help. I guess the thing that gets me is the number of different flavors (for lack of a better word) of Linux, Redhat, Debian, Slackware. Does each flavor require a different program to make speech available? My head is spinning. lol Anyway if someone can tell me a good resource I'd be grateful, and ultimately so will you because my questions will be infrequent. Rob