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Linux Distro Information for Transcribe!

This page is for collecting info about running Transcribe! on different Linux distros. I do not intend to test it myself on all of the dozens of distros available - life is too short. So instead, I am collecting feedback here from people who have tried it.

If you have useful information then do let me know - andy@seventhstring.com - and I will add it here. For example that some particular distro does work with Transcribe! 9, or that it doesn't and what the problem is, and how to solve that problem if you managed to.

Problems outputting sound

On some distros, some people find that Transcribe! freezes when you try to play audio, or takes several seconds to start. It seems to be especially common on distros with low latency kernels and Jack audio (including Librazik and KxStudio). If this happens to you then please see the FAQ here.

About Locales

You will of course have your computer set up for whatever locale is appropriate for your language and location. However Transcribe! needs to be able to select a known locale for its internal use, and we use en_US.UTF-8 for this purpose. Therefore this locale does need to be available on your system, and Transcribe! will complain if it doesn't find it. Depending on your language and location, en_US.UTF-8 may or may not be installed by default. If Transcribe! does complain about not finding it then you can use the "sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales" command.

About X11 and Wayland

Some distros are starting to use the Wayland compositor by default (e.g. Fedora 25). Transcribe! can only run on the X11 back end. However for compatibilty, distros using Wayland also include the X11 backend and Transcribe! will request this. If your distro defaults to Wayland then make sure you have Transcribe! 8.7 or later and all should be well.

About ARM processors

Transcribe! for Linux is built for x86-64 processors and we don't have an ARM build, sorry. This means, for instance, that you can't run it on a Raspberry Pi.

Transcribe! 9, built with Xubuntu 20.04

Please let me know - andy@seventhstring.com - what distros/versions it does/doesn't run on, and I will update this page.

Ubuntu/Xubuntu

This version was built on Xubuntu 20.04 and I also tested it (briefly) on Ubuntu 20.04, Xubuntu 22.04.4 and Xubuntu 24.04. However it does not work on 18.04. So update your Linux.

Debian 11 "Bullseye" & 12 "Bookworm"

I have a report that Debian 11 works fine, and I have briefly tried Debian 12.5.0 myself with no problems.

Mint 19.3

Apparently this is based on Ubuntu 18.04 and therefore Transcribe! 9 won't run. So update your Linux.

Mint 21.1

This works except I have heard there can be a problem with videos displaying as blank. This has to do with the priority of GStreamer plugins, see this page. Apparently avdec_h265 is good while vaapidecodebin is bad.
On that page it says "The priority of a codec (0 - 255?) can be manipulated via the GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK environment variable. By launching my app from a shell script that set the variable, I was able to work around the problem:
GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK="vaapidecodebin:0" python3 ..."
I presume it would be appropriate to put "transcribe" instead of "python3" here.

Chrome OS

Chrome OS is based on Linux and in fact I have a report that Transcribe! does work on the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2020) running Chrome OS version 92 (92.0.4515.157) with the Crostini Linux-Container Debian 10 (Buster) on it.
Obviously I cannot guarantee that Transcribe! will run on any particular Chrome version, so do please let me know if you try it. And as usual if it won't work then try launching it in a console so you get to see any error message.
Also see what Wikipedia has to say.

Fedora 34

I have a report that graphics may freeze from time to time. I searched for "fedora 34 graphics freeze" without the quotes and found many hits, so this may simply be a Fedora problem.

openSUSE Leap 15.4 with X11 and KDE

I have a report that it works fine.

Transcribe! 8.80, the last to be built with Xubuntu 18.04

Ubuntu/Xubuntu

This version was built on Xubuntu 18.04 and I also tested it (briefly) on Ubuntu 18.04 and Xubuntu 20.04.1. However it does not work on 14.04.

Mint MATE 19.1

Tested briefly, seems ok.

Mint Cinnamon 19.2

I have a report that it works fine, no known issues. However it does not work on 18.3.

Fedora 30 and also 32

I have reports that it works fine, no known issues.

Arch

I have a report that it works fine on the current Arch version (Aug 2020), no known issues. Make sure to download directly from us on this site, don't use any "package".

i3 window manager

I have a report that it works fine, no known issues. You may see a message "Failed to connect to session manager" but this is harmless.

Zorin 15.3

I have a report that it works fine, no known issues.