KI 3444 Linux @ UiB - Dictation

2026-07-21 (updated 2026-07-28)

Dictation/Voice recognition was one of the last domains in which proprietary applications under Microsoft Windows such as Dragon Dictate were leading. The good news: Linux and Open Source are catching up. While Dragon will only allow dictation in ONE language, there is no limit on the number of languages recognized by SpeechNote.

A comparison of voice recognition systems on Linux can be found under:
https://usevoicy.com/blog/speech-to-text-linux
https://flathub.org/en/apps/net.mkiol.SpeechNote
One of the most important distinctions between platforms is whether the dictation data remain on the local machine (indispensible for medical use, highly desired in academic contexts) or traverse the cloud.

SpeechNote

SpeechNote can be installed via flatpak.
The installation is a bit hairy and needs local administrator rights.

First install flatpak, then SpeechNote.

Setting up flatpak
https://flathub.org/en/setup/Ubuntu
sudo apt install flatpak

sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Now reboot your system.

Install SpeechNote
flatpak install flathub net.mkiol.SpeechNote

This will install 9 packages of about 1.6 GB total, which takes a while even through a fast Internet connection.

Start Speechnote
The command to start SpeechNote is:
flatpak run net.mkiol.SpeechNote

On the first startup, I got an error message:
flatpak run net.mkiol.SpeechNote &
[1] 7320
nnn~$ error: runtime/org.kde.Platform/x86_64/5.15-24.08 not installed
flatpak install flathub org.kde.Platform

After the installation of these extra packages the application should start.

Under Ubuntu 26 LTS there were some missing dependencies.
I ran
sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0 libxcb-xinerama0 libqt5x11extras5

Download "Speech to text" from within the application.
A good speech modal for English is "fast whisper crisp whisper"

Language packs

German
My favourite German pack is "Deutsch FasterWhisper Large-v3 Turbo". I wonder it works so well because I am native speaker.

English
"English FasterWhisper CrisperWhisper" works reasonably well.

Norsk
Preferred package:
"Norsk (FasterWhisper Large-v3)" seems to worked well.