Running Myna on Debian 13 (Trixie) with GNOME Wayland — community-tested installation guide

[shinz41]

Status: Community-tested installation report
Platform: Debian 13 (Trixie) · GNOME 48 · Wayland · amd64
Tested: 14 October 2026

Myna is currently documented as a speech-to-text application for Ubuntu Desktop. I was nevertheless able to install it on Debian 13 and verify offline French dictation. The main extra step was building Myna Settings locally from the upstream source instead of adding an Ubuntu PPA to Debian.

This post records the steps that worked on one machine. It is not a claim of official Debian support, and future Snap or upstream revisions may behave differently.

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1. Tested configuration

• Operating system: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Trixie), version 13.7
• Desktop session: GNOME 48.7 on Wayland
• Architecture: amd64
• Kernel: 6.12.111+deb13-amd64
• CPU / graphics: AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS with Radeon 780M integrated graphics
• Snap / snapd: 2.77.1 / 2.77.1
• Myna client: myna Snap, edge channel, version 0.2.3
• Whisper backend: myna-whisper Snap, edge channel, version 0.2.2
• Settings application: Myna Settings 0.2.3, built locally from source

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2. Install and check Snap

Myna's client Snap requires snapd 2.75 or newer. Debian's packaged snapd was older on my system, so I installed the Snap-provided snapd revision before proceeding.

Run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket
sudo snap install snapd
snap version

The version check on my machine reported Snap 2.77.1 and snapd 2.77.1. Depending on the state of your existing Snap installation, you may need to log out and back in or reboot before continuing.

Workaround only if sudo snap install snapd fails with context canceled

On my machine, the command initially failed with context canceled. The following systemd override allowed it to complete. Do not add this override unless you encounter that error.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/snapd.service.d
printf '[Service]\nEnvironment=SNAPD_STANDBY_WAIT=1m\n' \
  | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/snapd.service.d/override.conf
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart snapd snapd.socket
sudo snap install snapd
snap version

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3. Install dependencies to build Myna Settings

Myna Settings is distributed separately from the myna Snap. Rather than adding the Ubuntu-targeted PPA to Debian, I built the .deb from the upstream repository.

Install the build dependencies:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  git build-essential dpkg-dev debhelper \
  appstream blueprint-compiler cargo rustc dbus-daemon gettext \
  gir1.2-adw-1 gir1.2-gtk-4.0 libadwaita-1-dev \
  libglib2.0-dev libgtk-4-dev pkgconf xvfb \
  libglib2.0-bin pkexec libssl-dev

Install the Rust dependency-vendoring tool used by the build script:

cargo install cargo-vendor-filterer --version 0.5.17 --locked
export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"
cargo-vendor-filterer --version

The version used for this test was 0.5.17. I needed libssl-dev; without it, the Cargo installation failed because the openssl-sys crate could not find the system OpenSSL development libraries.

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4. Build and install Myna Settings

Fetch the upstream source and stage the Debian source package:

git clone https://github.com/canonical/myna.git ~/src/myna
cd ~/src/myna
make build-deb-source

On the checkout used for this test, the staged source directory was:

~/src/myna/target/deb/stonking/myna-config-0.2.3

The staging step warned that it could not look up gnome-shell for the stonking packaging series, so the GNOME Shell version check was skipped. Staging still completed; that warning is not proof that every GNOME version is supported.

Build and install the generated package:

cd ~/src/myna/target/deb/stonking/myna-config-0.2.3
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
sudo apt install ~/src/myna/target/deb/stonking/myna-config_0.2.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
myna-config --version

The installed application reported myna-config 0.2.3.

Warning

Packaging caveat: stonking is an Ubuntu packaging series, not a Debian 13 series. This locally built Ubuntu-targeted package installed and worked on my test system, but it should not be treated as a general-purpose Debian package. Do not add the upstream Ubuntu PPA to Debian as a shortcut. Build output paths and package versions may change upstream; use the paths generated by your own build if they differ.

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5. Install Myna and the Whisper backend

Enable Snap's user-daemon feature, then install the edge builds tested here:

sudo snap set system experimental.user-daemons=true
sudo snap install myna --edge
sudo snap install myna-whisper --edge

Connect microphone capture and the local transcription backend:

sudo snap connect myna:pipewire
sudo snap connect myna:backend myna-whisper:provider

You can inspect the connections with:

snap connections myna
snap connections myna-whisper

The pipewire connection lets Myna capture microphone audio. The backend connection lets the client communicate with the transcription service over a local Unix socket.

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6. Open Settings and test dictation

Launch Myna Settings as your logged-in user — do not run it with sudo:

myna-config

Complete any setup offered by the application, check that a backend is connected, and configure or keep the keyboard shortcut shown in Settings.

For the Whisper backend, set the spoken language to French:

myna.config set language fr

My end-to-end test: I opened GNOME Text Editor, clicked in a text field, pressed the Myna shortcut, spoke a sentence in French, and pressed the shortcut again. The French transcription appeared in the text field.

Troubleshooting: Diagnostics reports “Myna is not running”

On my machine, the user service existed and was enabled but initially showed inactive (dead). Starting the user unit manually resolved this:

systemctl --user start snap.myna.myna.service
sleep 5
systemctl --user status snap.myna.myna.service --no-pager -l

A working service should remain active (running). To inspect its log:

journalctl --user -u snap.myna.myna.service -n 50 --no-pager

The journal on my system included daemon ready; tap your dictation shortcut to start/stop. Interestingly, both snap services myna and snap services --user myna returned expected 1 results, got 0, even though systemd knew about the user unit. In this situation, systemctl --user status snap.myna.myna.service was the useful check.

The GNOME Shell extension may not be recognized by the current session until the next login after installing Settings. Logging out and back in is worth trying if the indicator or extension does not appear. The extension is optional as long as the daemon and dictation work.

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7. Optional: use Parakeet instead of Whisper

After verifying the basic installation, I also installed the Parakeet backend and tested French dictation with it. Parakeet supports French and detects the spoken language automatically, so the Whisper-specific myna.config set language fr setting is not used by Parakeet.

If Parakeet is installed and you want to switch providers manually, disconnect Whisper and connect Parakeet so that Myna has only one active inference backend connected at a time:

sudo snap disconnect myna:backend myna-whisper:provider
sudo snap connect myna:backend myna-parakeet:provider

Only run these two commands after myna-parakeet is installed. You can also use the setup flow in Myna Settings to install/select a backend when that option is offered.

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8. GPU note

The test machine has an AMD Radeon 780M integrated GPU. The GPU engines currently provided by the Whisper and Parakeet Snaps use NVIDIA/CUDA, so there is no direct AMD GPU option in these packaged engines. CPU inference was therefore the working configuration on this machine.

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9. Upstream references

• Myna project repository
• Myna client Snap: setup and troubleshooting
• Whisper backend instructions
• Parakeet backend instructions
• Building Myna Settings from source
• Installing Snap on Debian

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Result

On Debian 13.7 with GNOME 48.7 on Wayland, I built and installed Myna Settings 0.2.3, installed the Myna 0.2.3 edge client and Whisper 0.2.2 edge backend, started the user service, and verified French dictation in a text editor. Parakeet was subsequently installed and tested as an alternative.

This is a record of a working setup on one machine, not a guarantee for every Debian installation or future upstream revision. Feedback on improving Debian compatibility is welcome.