hiran wrote: ↑Wed Jul 30, 2025 8:03 pm
This version runs nicely on my Ubuntu 24 LTS. However the restrictions on speech output remain. If turned on they can block the game.
Quite unfortunate as whenever I target another ship and the missile locks there is a speech message - blocking the game. When I can finally shoot the other ship is no longer at my laser target.
There's something to learn here, but I don't know what it is.
I've just tried this out on a live boot of Ubuntu 24.04.2.
Ingredients.
- i5-6500T with 8G Ram.
- Ubuntu 24.04.2 ISO copied to a Ventoy stick.
- The latest (test variant) release SE installer from my fork on a spare partition of my Ventoy (you can't see the main Ventoy partition if you boot from it).
Other computers are available

It'd probably work out the same using standard Ubu install stick instead of Ventoy.
Method.
Boot Ubuntu.
Install Oolite.
Run it:
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$ /home/ubuntu/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite/oolite
Watch it fail. Figure out the dependencies. Install them.
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sudo apt update
sudo apt install libsdl1.2debian libopenal1 libobjc4
At this point, at least for me, speech-dispatcher was not running. You can read below to see ways to check for it and kill it to put things in the same state.
Start a new game, then go to game options. Turn speech to 'on'. Set a female voice. Nope. The female setting makes no difference.
Close Oolite.
Invoke the speech dispatcher:
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# check it's there..
$ ps x | grep speech | grep -v grep
# Returns nothing, so it was not loaded.
$ spd-say hello
# check it's there..
$ ps x | grep speech | grep -v grep
ubuntu 10344 0.3 0.1 475656 10680 ? Ssl 15:54 0:01 /usr/bin/speech-dispatcher -s -t 0
ubuntu 10359 0.1 0.1 116292 10068 ? Sl 15:54 0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_espeak-ng /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/espeak-ng.conf
ubuntu 10362 0.0 0.0 162692 6216 ? Sl 15:54 0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_dummy /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/dummy.conf
ubuntu 10365 0.0 0.0 5668 2820 ? S 15:54 0:00 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_openjtalk /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/openjtalk.conf
# Clearly!
...then run Oolite. Setting female voice works, so set that and English (Great Britain), then save the game.
Close Oolite and kill speech-dispatcher:
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kill $(ps x | grep speech-dispatcher | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}')
...then run Oolite, loading the save-game, speech is still Female. Speech-dispatcher has not been restarted. It does not seem to matter if speech-dispatcher is running/present at this point.
At no point did I experience any lag that I could attribute to speech.
Maybe it's different once Ubuntu is installed.
Would appreciate it if you'd try it a) on your setup, and b) from the live installer, and let me know what happens.