Line 3 of /etc/system-config/kernel has a yes in it that makes kernel hijacks possible, change that to no and you prevent speakup kernel from being replaced as default in future. The 0 entry is the default kernel in menu.list or grub.conf and it's what will be used to boot without user intervention. At least in fc3, you could also include exclude=kernel* in /etc/yum.conf to prevent kernel updates from being installed too. I'm sure debian can do this too but haven't researched that so won't write out of turn. Anyone running fc3 really should visit http://www.fedoranews.com and have a look at the faq file on repositories. The reason it's called fedora core in the first place is other packages useable are being archived on other repositories and can be downloaded if you get the right contents in a /etc/yum.conf file. That site has a yum.conf file available for download that includes lots more repositories.
