The speech-tools ebuild script does not enable esd-support. Adding: use esd && sed -i 's/# \(INCLUDE_MODULES += ESD_AUDIO\)/\1/' config/config.in use X || sed -i 's/-lX11 -lXt//' config/modules/esd_audio.mak add the end of src_unpack and modifying IUSE to include esd and X should solve this. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: USE="esd" emerge speech-tools festival Actual Results: no esd support Expected Results: esd support Related to #57089
In portage. Thanks.