When I first decided that I wanted to use text to speech on a daily basis, I began researching and testing the available applications.
The Mint/Ubuntu repositories showed much promise. The first thing I did was become acquainted with the KDE app Jovie. It’s appeal was that it’s built to work right in KDE, but right out of the gate I ran into a such a high level of complexity and gaping holes in usability that I just shut it down and began searching for other solutions. Apparently, Jovie depends on other voice “synthesisers” to get working.