On Mon, 30 Oct 2006, John Heim wrote: > I think the introductory messages to oralux are sound files written to the > sound device and no speech is loaded at the beginning. Maybe you could do > something like that. Get Kathleen turner to record a message that says > "Welcome to ubuntu. For speech, press F5." That would require, would it not, fully booting the system, in order to first detect the sound hardware. So, boot with speakup, but in an inactive state. Set a key combination to activate it (loading modules, etc.). Play the audio file as you suggest. If the user presses the key sequence, the system will switch into speech mode, at a text console. That only covers speech, however. Luke