FYI, I made the change from Windows to Linux (Linux Mint) about a year ago. I am very glad I made the change.
The first difficulty I had after leaving Windows is finding Text To Speech (TTS) software. I write books, as part of my editing process I found that (Particularly for dialog ) if I hear the words I’d written for dialog played back to me it made unrealistic dialog jump out to my attention allowing me to ID it and make changes. Microsoft Word 2019 included in integral Text To Speech capability that I want to find for Linux … so far, I’ve found a lot of “Stuff” and many free but they just don’t come close to working right. I don’t want it “In the Cloud” I’d like it to reside on my computer, hopefully in Libre Write… like Windows Word 2019 was.
This AM I purchased an old Windows 2010 laptop and Microsoft Office 2019 Software intending to use it only for the Microsoft Word software. It was interesting (sadly) to note that the Microsoft Office software cost $30 MORE than the Laptop)
Welcome to the forums. How cool! Hmm honestly you might not need to buy anything. The reason most Linux TTS sounds rough is the default eSpeak voices.
The fix is installing better voice backends. Check out Piper (GitHub - OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl: Fast and local neural text-to-speech engine · GitHub), it runs fully offline and the neural voices are genuinely close to what you got out of Word.
LibreOffice does have a “Read Text” extension that can pipe to external engines like Piper, so you can get pretty close to that Word 2019 experience inside Writer: Read Text Extension - Linux
Welcome to the Community @Jackfee1
First of all, congratulations on making the move from Windows to Linux and sticking with it for about a year now. Many people try Linux for a few weeks and return to Windows at the first inconvenience, so it’s always encouraging to hear from someone who has genuinely integrated Linux into their daily workflow.
I think you’re looking at this from the wrong angle.
The issue is not that Linux lacks commercial-quality text-to-speech. The issue is that most Linux distributions still expose eSpeak as the default voice stack, and eSpeak gives a very poor first impression compared to what Microsoft ships in Word.
For a writing and editing workflow, especially dialogue review, I would stop evaluating “Linux TTS” based on eSpeak entirely.
What you actually want is a neural TTS engine.
Today the strongest offline option on Linux is Piper. It runs completely locally, requires no cloud services, supports multiple English voices, and uses modern neural speech synthesis rather than the older formant-based approach used by traditional Linux speech engines. Many users consider it the closest open-source equivalent to the quality level people expect from current commercial TTS systems. It is also lightweight enough to run comfortably on ordinary desktop hardware.
The second part of your problem is integration.
You do not really need a standalone TTS application. What you need is a workflow that allows you to highlight text inside your manuscript and immediately hear it read back.
My recommendation would be:
1. Install Piper.
2. Select one of the higher quality English neural voices.
3. Connect Piper to LibreOffice Writer through a read-aloud extension or custom script.
4. Assign a keyboard shortcut so selected text is spoken instantly.
At that point your editing workflow becomes almost identical to what you were doing in Word 2019.
If your goal is novel editing, focus on four things:
• Natural sentence rhythm
• Proper pause placement
• Dialogue cadence
• Pronunciation consistency
Piper performs well enough in all four areas that awkward dialogue usually becomes obvious during playback.
If you are willing to spend money, I would actually suggest investing in a professionally recorded neural voice package or a dedicated audiobook-style narration tool rather than buying another Windows laptop. Hardware is not solving the problem. The speech engine is.
Also keep in mind that Word 2019’s read-aloud feature is not magical. Much of what people perceive as “better TTS” comes from Microsoft’s voice models rather than Word itself. Once Linux is paired with a modern neural backend such as Piper, the gap becomes much smaller than many new Linux users expect.
So, don’t buy software yet. Build a proper Piper + LibreOffice workflow first. There’s a good chance it solves the exact problem that sent you back to Windows.
Pricing:
- Pay As You Go: From $1, $0.018/min, credits never expire
- Creator ($19/mo): 15k seconds, 3 rapid clones, HD audio
- Professional ($99/mo): 45k seconds, 20 rapid clones, localization
- Business ($699/mo): 360k seconds, 500 rapid clones, API access
A quick search gave these options. I don’t use text to speech myself. I also don’t like subscription models of paid software.
i.e, Like what Quicken has went to, I bought Moneydance instead.
IMHO, answers to your questions are fine. Nevertheless, I’d thank you for opportunity to discuss some common misconceptions about Linux. Well, been there done that! 
First and foremost: Linux and open-source software (OSS) in general do not deny commercial software. OSS is not necessarily famous for being “free as in beer”, i.e. “gratis”, but for being “free as in speech”, i.e. “libre”.
Next to it, being “commercial” does not mean being of highest quality at all. Linux based OSes are an excellent example for the statement.
The best, most popular and reliable software for Linux OSes is usually backed by industrial software development workflow. The latter is usually exercised by dedicated non-profit foundations, organisations and commercial entities. At the same time it is not unusual in Linux world that highly talented and disciplined individuals provide and support world-famous software. Frankly, be the latter the case, such a software quickly receives public attention and builds sustainable open-source community/infrastructure around itself ensuring its future.
Takeaway: in the Linux world you simply search for software that suits your needs be it commercial or free an in beer.
I agree with you 99.9% of the time. My one hard time was replacing Quicken (personal finance). GnuCash is great open source accounting software but overkill for personal finance. I wanted a direct ledger entry program. All I could find was stuff with weird text boxes not direct entry. MoneyDance isn’t exactly that, the bottom line where you do the entry is just like the ledger and just below it, and when you save the entry it moves up into the ledger. That is as close as I could find to Quicken 2002 which I had used on an old Windows machine until last October when MS updated the OS and my wife opened the program and got the message ‘this program won’t run on this machine’.
MoneyDance was just about $67 USD, a self contained .deb file so no dependency issues and you get one free upgrade. You can also run instances on multiple machines, as many as you own, including both .deb and Windows machines.
I was able to use Quicken 2002 from 2002 until 2025 23 years. I should be able to do it with this program too.
As I said I don’t like the subscription model most software is going to, so this is the one spot I found paid to be better. In the end my wife and I actually like MoneyDance better than Quicken. It’s the only paid Linux program I have ever used.
I had tried Gnucash, KMyMoney, HomeBank, Buddi, Skrooge, and MoneyManager Ex and found them all overkill or lacking. MoneyManager Ex would have been my second choice but is also paid.