I believe the grml author or maintainer is on the list so I'll let him field your question about how to get speakup running with a distro the easiest way. As for usb synths in general I don't have working code to support usb in cvs yet but should get around to doing that at some point. Kirk -- Kirk Reiser The Computer Braille Facility e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca University of Western Ontario phone: (519) 661-3061