Dragon NaturallySpeaking users — full 2026 migration guide is live.

What you need to know:
• Dragon costs £699. Alternatives exist for free.
• Local processing = your voice data stays on YOUR device
• 140 languages, works on any website

Full guide: https://telegra.ph/Dragon-NaturallySpeaking-Users-Here-Is-Your-2026-Migration-Guide-02-15

#DragonNaturallySpeaking #VoiceAI #Accessibility #Dictation

I put LMDE on my laptop this week (after much planning and consideration), and then have been experimenting with Talon Voice. Once I started customising its vocabulary, it's been better than I expected at word recognition! Has _some_ disadvantages compared with Dragon, but is pleasingly faster to respond. Overall not far off.

Originally I had been thinking I would put Dragon back on as well, on top of a Windows on top of a virtual machine, but now I'm thinking maybe I won't need to bother. The time I would've spent wrangling that might be better invested in optimising my Talon setup.

#LMDE #TalonVoice #DragonNaturallySpeaking #software #EndOf10

How much would it cost and how long would it take to develop a really good speech-to-text and control by voice program for Linux? Something that would be a replacement for Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking on Windows.

Talon exists but it isn't open source and, importantly, doesn't adapt its model to the individual user. It also has no real editing functionality. You can't change and correct text by voice command. Its model is pretty good. There are a few open source speech to text programmes but they are slow and have really limited functionality.

This makes me sad because I cannot simply switch away from Windows with the end of ten because my major use of a computer is to write and edit documents.

#Linux, #FOSS, #Talon, #DragonNaturallySpeaking, #Accessibility

Today's work computer nightmare: whenever they did last night in the windows update broke dragon.

So I'm using windows speech. Which is almost good enough, but has a fatal flaw.

However, when I started it up, it said "windows speech is being phased out, would you like to try windows voice access"

So I tried voice access. It is slower by a lot, does not seem to remember the new words that I try to add when I do correction, puts up an obnoxious title bar that wastes screen real estate, and the correction dialogue is almost as useless as the one in windows speech.

So I guess I'm using windows speech until I learn how to unbreak dragon. (The IT people at an idea about that, which I am pursuing.)

#DragonNaturallySpeaking #WindowsVoiceAccess #Windows

#AskFedi: has anyone got Dragon NaturallySpeaking running on top of Linux?

It doesn't look likely to work with Wine, going by this page: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2077

But what about within a virtual machine? Anyone done that already & can advise?

(I remember reading that sometimes with VMs, it's the input/output interfaces that don't necessarily work, and obviously audio input is vital in this case, with audio output also often useful for corrections.)

=

For context:

a) I rely on Dragon for considerable amounts of writing, so as not to exacerbate some finger-RSI.

b) I'd like to switch to running Linux on my laptop, and this is the main reason I'm so far not.

c) I'm on Dragon 15, and will likely stick with that unless there's a good reason to upgrade.

=

I was hopeful of Speech Note (a Linux-compatible speech-to-text thing), and recently tried that out - but couldn't see a way to add custom vocab & preferences like you can with Dragon. That's a dealbreaker, because corrections make the dictation process way slower. If anyone knows a Linux alternative which _does_ include custom vocab, I'd be interested in that too.

I'm not too attached to fast initial-dictation speed if the result is accurate.

=

Thanks in advance for advice / experience!

#Linux #Dragon #DragonNaturallySpeaking #VirtualMachines