TuxTalk
Looking for Dragon on Linux?
Dragon doesn't run on Linux. Here's what it still does better, and what you can use instead.
Dragon doesn't run on Linux
Nuance stopped making Dragon for the Mac in 2018, and the desktop editions you can buy now, Dragon Professional and Dragon Legal v16, are Windows 10 and 11 only. There's no Linux version. People have tried it under Wine for years, and the reports aren't good: older versions partly worked, and I couldn't find anyone running the current one.
What Dragon still does better
I'll be straight about it. Dragon has decades of work behind it. It can run your whole computer by voice with commands and macros, it has legal and medical vocabularies, and offices can manage one word list for everybody. If you need that, Dragon on a Windows machine is still the tool, and TuxTalk won't replace it.
If you just want to talk instead of type
TuxTalk is free voice dictation for Linux. You hold F8, talk, and it types what you said into whatever app has the focus. It runs on your own computer with NVIDIA's Parakeet or OpenAI's Whisper, offline, and it can use an NVIDIA, AMD or Intel graphics card. It works on KDE, GNOME, Sway, Hyprland, Cinnamon and other X11 desktops, with no keyboard shortcut to set up in your desktop's settings.
You can teach it your own words, fix a word it keeps getting wrong, say "comma" or "new paragraph", and say "press enter" to send a message. There's an optional AI, also on your computer, that catches "no wait, make that four" and drops the wrong part, and you can turn a recording or a video into text too.
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Dragon Professional | TuxTalk | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows 10 and 11 | Linux |
| Price | About $700, one time (Nuance lists "contact us") | Free, MIT license |
| Works offline | Yes | Yes |
| Your own words | Yes | Yes, Your Words and Fix a Word |
| Voice control of the computer | Yes, commands and macros | A few editing and moving phrases |
| Medical and legal vocabularies | Yes (Legal edition, Dragon Medical) | No |
| Audio files to text | Yes | Yes, Transcribe a File |
Prices and details are as of October 2026, from each product's own pages where I could find them. They change, so check there before you decide. If something here is out of date, tell me in Discussions and I'll fix it.
Get TuxTalk See what it does Every Linux dictation app compared