I don't know of any site which compares distrobutions. The thing to remember is distrobutions are a method of collecting and packaging programs. The main difference you see is where things are located on your system, how your system handles upgrades, what comes with a "standard" system. Some are very large in size while others are not. Most of the programms are the same. when you get a functioning system using info and man will tell you the options for that program. I can really only speak with limited authority on two distrobutions, fedora(formerly redhat) and debian. Both have pre-compiled speakup kernels with speakup available. That means that you can boot speakup and linux with speach if you have a hardware synthesiser. All distrobutions use the same keywords for the name of your synthesiser because that is controlled by speakup and that information is available in a few places on the speakup website. Both distrobutions have a ystem for organizing, managing software. Debian's system is more advanced I think then rpm because if you install a package which needs another package, you should get that package as well whithout having to specify you need that package. Debian clasifies their versions as either stable, testing or unstable. Stable is what they determine as a production system, it's disadvantage is that it may lack some features or software you need. Testing will have a few more buggs but more features and unstable continues this trend. The standard Fedora distrobution with speakup will be more recent interms of what it offers for software, how well it detects your hardware like usb and cd berners then the standard speakup debian distrobution. To install debian you can get or bern cd images of all the cds or do an installation which starts with floppies and/or cd images and install the rest as you need it over a internet connection. The standard fedora distrobution is better suited for berning cd immages and installing. Fedora has a better howto for installing itwith speakup, but debian also has great documentation explaining the general installation procedure. Keep in mind these are just two distrobutions to choose from there are several others, slackware, gintu, etc. Because this is linux, you don't have to stick to one distrobution's philosophy or even use a packaged distrobution at all. You could start with one distrobution and install everything else from source not using a package manager. I chose Debian because I like it's package manager, it was easy for me to setup as a command-line or console system, I could install what I needed over a network and I have a co-worker who is familear with Debian. I can't say one distrobution is better then another or that speakup runns better on one or another because everything is so customizable. Some may need more tweeking to make everything work the way you want. I hope that answers some of your questions, that I haven't confused you and that I haven't said anything incorrect here.
