Vocalinux v0.18.2

A patch release on the stable line with two visible additions and a pile of reliability fixes. The dictation overlay is now a live mic orb that pulses and ripples with real audio level, and Nix users get an official flake with NixOS and Home Manager modules, including Vulkan GPU inference for whisper.cpp. If the v0.18.1 AppImage crashed on startup for you, this is the build to grab.

Highlights

New features

• Live mic orb: the dictation overlay reacts to microphone loudness with an audio-reactive pulse and peak ripples (#940 by @AlexThunder1989)
• Nix package: nix run github:VocaHQ/vocalinux, plus nixosModules.vocalinux and homeManagerModules.vocalinux for declarative installs via programs.vocalinux.enable = true (#936; requested in #931 by @jimfulton)

Bug fixes

Packaging and inference

• Vulkan GPU inference for the Nix build of pywhispercpp, so Vulkan-capable GPUs (the reporter's GTX 1650) stop falling back to CPU (#942 by @Depfrost)
• Bundled pywhispercpp builds drop -march=native, fixing SIGILL crashes of the v0.18.1 AppImage on older CPUs (#939; fixes #938 reported by @JesterEE)

Hotkeys and input devices

• A keyboard is left ungrabbed at startup while a key is held or events are queued, so typing during launch can no longer strand a held key (#941 by @AlexThunder1989)
• Remapper-style virtual keyboards are monitored ungrabbed instead of being skipped or stolen (#932; fixes #930 reported by @rafaeln)
• uinput clones no longer copy SW_RFKILL_ALL, so a "ThinkPad Extra Buttons"-style device cannot soft-block your wifi radios (#947; fixes #946 reported by @MarkMajor)

Installer

• curl | bash keeps the script on stdin and prompts through /dev/tty, fixing the curl error 23 failure mid-install (#935; fixes #933 reported by @niconiconiconiconiconi)
• cairo headers are now installed on openSUSE, Void, Solus, and Alpine (#937)

Website

• The install section showcases the .deb, .rpm, Snap, Flatpak, and AUR packages (#929)

CI and maintenance

• The remote curl | bash install path is now covered end to end in CI (#898 by @sesav)
• OSS Scanner build and threat model added (#934 by @Mr-Sunglasses)

Thanks

Code in this release: @AlexThunder1989 (#940, #941), @Depfrost (#942), @sesav (#898), @Mr-Sunglasses (#934). Reports and requests that shaped it: @jimfulton (#931), @JesterEE (#938), @niconiconiconiconiconi (#933), @rafaeln (#930), @MarkMajor (#946).

Install or upgrade

Recommended, one-line installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/VocaHQ/vocalinux/main/install.sh | bash

Nix / NixOS (new in this release):

nix run github:VocaHQ/vocalinux          # try it
nix profile install github:VocaHQ/vocalinux

Or declaratively: vocalinux.nixosModules.vocalinux in a NixOS config, or vocalinux.homeManagerModules.vocalinux with programs.vocalinux.enable = true under Home Manager. Vulkan GPU inference is built in.

Native packages: vocalinux_0.18.2-1_amd64.deb or vocalinux-0.18.2-1.x86_64.rpm (aarch64 builds attached too).

AppImage: Vocalinux-0.18.2-x86_64.AppImage (aarch64 build attached too). chmod +x and run.

AUR: yay -S vocalinux (source build) or yay -S vocalinux-bin (AppImage wrapper); both are on 0.18.2.

PyPI: pipx install vocalinux.

Snap (sideload until the Store lists 0.18.x): sudo snap install --dangerous ./vocalinux_0.18.2_amd64.snap && sudo snap connect vocalinux:uinput.

Flatpak: flatpak install ./com.vocalinux.Vocalinux.flatpak from the assets below.

Verifying

Every binary asset ships SHA256SUMS plus GitHub attestations:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing
gh attestation verify <file> --repo VocaHQ/vocalinux

Full changelog: v0.18.1...v0.18.2