There are a couple other options.
Fenrir or tdsr.
Tdsr needs pyte speech-dispatcher and python3-speechd then
Git clone https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr
After that cd tdsr then ./tdsr enter to see if it comes up talking. Speak up wouldn’t work on a Chromebook I had so I used tdsr to get around chrome box since tdsr performs way better in Linux on Chromebook than chrome box.
On Jul 4, 2025, at 9:50 AM, Nick Gawronski <nick@nickgawronski.com> wrote:
Hi, I have trixie installed and noticed that after lots of updates espeakup no longer speaks when the system reboots to the console but I am able to use orca just fine. I have no idea what packages that were upgraded caused the issue as there were espeak-ng and speech-dispatcher updates but espeakup was not updated and the systemctl status command ran fine with no issues and it has the espeakup process running. Here is the output from that command.
● espeakup.service - Software speech output for Speakup
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/espeakup.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-07-04 08:36:41 CDT; 3min 24s ago
Invocation: 33d04d2a117b43f3a1f47dbde4fe4e47
Docs: man:espeakup(8)
Process: 973 ExecStartPre=modprobe speakup_soft (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 974 ExecStart=/usr/bin/espeakup --default-voice=${default_voice} (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 1000 (espeakup)
Tasks: 4 (limit: 9265)
Memory: 13.2M (peak: 14.5M)
CPU: 300ms
CGroup: /system.slice/espeakup.service
└─1000 /usr/bin/espeakup --default-voice=
Jul 04 08:36:41 dellsysteminspironn7110 systemd[1]: Starting espeakup.service - Software speech output for Speakup...
Jul 04 08:36:41 dellsysteminspironn7110 systemd[1]: Started espeakup.service - Software speech output for Speakup.
Nick Gawronski