This requires you to go back and edit, but that being said it still works a lot better than the other software that I have used so far on Linux. Another issue is that it doesn’t automatically capitalize the words when you dictate such as those at the beginning of the sentence or the word ‘I’. (I started manually pressing space everytime I paused to add the space). So unless you’re careful you need to go back and add spaces to all the sentences that you have dictated, which can get annoying.

The software does have some quirks, like when you are talking and you pause it will take it as a start of a new sentence and for some reason it doesn’t put a space after the last word. The smaller ones can run on systems as small as a raspberry pi, so depending on your system configuration you can choose. However, do keep in mind that the larger models use up a lot more memory so you need to ensure that your computer has enough memory to support the larger models. In addition, I would recommend that you install one of the larger dictionaries/models which makes the voice recognition a lot more accurate. I set it up on /usr/local but it is up to you where you want it. This downloads the software in the current directory. Unfortunately my word install on Linux using Crossover doesn’t allow me to use the built in dictate function and I have no desire to boot into windows just so that I can dictate a document. This software works more like Microsoft dictate which is built into Word. So, you have to go back and edit/correct the transcript which can be a pain for long dictations. Previously I have used tried using software like otter.ai which actually works quite well but doesn’t allow you to edit the text as you’re typing, so you basically dictate the whole thing and the system gives you the transcription after you are done. Nerd-dictation allows you to dictate text into any software or editor which is open so I can dictate into a word document or a blog post or even the command prompt. The steps to install are fairly simple and documented below for reference: It is fairly easy to setup as compared to the other voice-to-text systems that are available but still not at a stage where a non-tech savvy person would be able to install it easily. The software is called nerd-dictation and is an open source software.

After a long time of searching I finally found a speech to text software for Linux that actually works well enough that I can use it for dictating without having to jump through too many hoops to configure and use.

Speech to text software linux