Comment 3 for bug 692996

Thank you for correcting me. You are correct, festival does not start as expected without additional work. I am not sure a file in /etc/init.d is needed, but don't really know what is. It is possible a resolution to bug 209900 or bug 662630 would resolve this issue.

I am going to mark this confirmed, based on further testing in the latest development release, Natty Narwhal.

Again, thanks for helping improve Ubuntu. Please continue to report bugs as you find them.