@tj110158

flite will read text from a file and synth it into a voice. i think its the -t or -f parameter and the path to the file you want "read". it is not really intelligent, so you may get some weird stuff like special characters being verbalized.

as for your real question, many linux apps will work, but most will need to be ported for the platform. the processor does not have the same horsepower or instruction set as a desktop/laptop so some functionality has to be stripped or massaged to work on the device. then the code has to be compiled with a compiler that optimizes the code for the arm processor.