How To Install espeak-ng on Ubuntu 20.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak-ng on Ubuntu 20.04. espeak-ng is Multi-lingual software speech synthesizer

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak-ng on Ubuntu 20.04.

What is espeak-ng

espeak-ng is:

eSpeak NG is a software speech synthesizer for English, and some other languages.

eSpeak NG produces good quality English speech. It uses a different synthesis method from other open source text to speech (TTS) engines, and sounds quite different. It’s perhaps not as natural or “smooth”, but some find the articulation clearer and easier to listen to for long periods.

It can run as a command line program to speak text from a file or from stdin.

  • Includes different Voices, whose characteristics can be altered.
  • Can produce speech output as a WAV file.
  • Can translate text to phoneme codes, so it could be adapted as a front end for another speech synthesis engine.
  • Potential for other languages. More than 80 languages are included.
  • Compact size.
  • Written in C.

There are three methods to install espeak-ng on Ubuntu 20.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install espeak-ng Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak-ng using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install espeak-ng

Install espeak-ng Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak-ng using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install espeak-ng

Install espeak-ng Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install espeak-ng using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install espeak-ng

How To Uninstall espeak-ng on Ubuntu 20.04

To uninstall only the espeak-ng package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove espeak-ng

Uninstall espeak-ng And Its Dependencies

To uninstall espeak-ng and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 20.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove espeak-ng

Remove espeak-ng Configurations and Data

To remove espeak-ng configuration and data from Ubuntu 20.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge espeak-ng

Remove espeak-ng configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove espeak-ng configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge espeak-ng

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install espeak-ng package on Ubuntu 20.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.