According to Tom Gundersen: # The reason we don't want to be using/etc/conf.d/* is that it is # Arch-specific, and hopefully we will one day be using a service file # provided by upstream, which would not know anything about conf.d. Oh thanks Tom. Good to know I did the right thing after all. I knew conf.d was Arch-specific, but I thought I still needed to take the command tail from that file. This also answers the question of whether or not arguments can be passed to the daemon started by ExecStart= in a copied service file. So in the example given by the OP, the ExecStart line should look like ExecStart=/usr/bin/espeakup --default-voice=en-us and then the edited file should be saved to /etc/systemd/espeakup.service. Did I get this right, or does the symbolic link in /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/espeakup.service need to be removed and replaced with the copy of the file with the modified ExecStart= line? ~Kyle http://kyle.tk