Hello Again Tom, Thanks a lot for your help. I have never done anything like that. I have no idea how to go about it. I have downloaded the files you recommended, but I have no idea what to do with them. I have never recompiled or configured anything for linux. I need a step by step instruction on how to do that. In fact I placed the speakup-1.5.tar.gz in the directory /usr/src, and when I booted the computer to start zipspeak, linux changed the file name to speaku#1.$00 which shocked me. I almost gave up on the hole thing. It simply rejected the name. Can you help? or at least, is there a linux for dummies that I can lookup what these words mean? Any help would be extremely appreciated. Cheers, Cris