I like keyboards without stabs.

I’ll take this question to be about getting used to it after programming a suitable layout. I daily drive a keyboard with 42 keys.

How to get used to it? Patience and acceptance. You need to be patient. It won’t be a quick process. And you need to accept that you will be slower for a long time. And accept that the coming period will be frustrating. You need to tell yourself this explicitly: I will learn this layout and it will be painful but I accept that this is the case.

A practical tip: do not go back to a comfy keyboard when frustrated. If you go back to your normal keyboard again and again, your muscle memory will not update as well (in my experience). Every time you go back you kinda undo some of the muscle memory updates (not science just my experience). Once you body gets that this is how it is now, it will adapt to this new normal and you will learn the layout.

Once I learned a non qwerty keyboard layout. That was one of the most frustrating things I have ever done (much harder than getting used to layers on a 40%). I got through it by accepting the frustration: you feel it, note to yourself in your head that this is indeed what you are feeling, breathe, accept it and continue using the layout. Slowly if needed! As long as you keep using it. You can only get good with it if you stick with it. I’m not saying that you need to go this route. But if you want to, you gotta get a bit zen with it.

No stabs 👍 All my homies hate stabs.

I see, didn’t know about the new Cherry switches. Regarding Cherry giving up the lead in the enthusiast space, I think it’s even worse. GMK bought their tooling from cherry when they started. Cherry could not only have been a leader in switches but in double shots at the same time…

What switches do people use now?

The “now” part I’m not sure about because I’m out of the hobby for some years. The “people” part depends on who we are talking about. Maybe Cherry is still popular in boards you can buy in shops or on big online stores, I don’t know. But in my time, Cherry was far from a popular choice to put in custom keyboards. Almost all switches used were cherry style switches, meaning they fit the same keycaps, are roughly of the same size, fit in the same pcb’s, etc. But people usually get them from other companies, eg Kailh, Gateron, etc. There is just more choice in terms of materials, colours, bump profile, smoothness, springs, click mechanism, you name it. It was also common to combine switches, like using the top of one switch with the bottom of another or swap stems. Other brands were perceived to be higher quality. Cherrys were known for being scratchy instead of smooth, having a weak tactile bump, clicky variations being rattly instead of crisp as well as lacking in some other areas such as stem wobble and sound. For example, I’m typing right now on Gateron Ink Black v2 switches lubed with Tribosys 3204, filmed with Kebo films and springs swapped for bag lubed Tx L 16mm 62gr springs. On the other hand, there is a smaller group of people that is all about vintage Cherry switches, desoldering them from old boards to use them in new builds. The sheath on the stem switches you saw are probably some sort of box switches (I think it’s supposed to reduce stem wobble and thus smoothness in practice).

So basically they are in trouble and in order to appease their creditor they need to reduce costs? Moving production to China might reduce quality, but Cherry switches are only used in prebuilds for people with no knowledge or experience with custom boards so I don’t think it will matter. Unless something big changed from when I stopped paying attention onward, almost nobody puts contemporary Cherry switches in their builds.

Most plastic keycaps are ABS or PBT, also vintage ones. But there are some white on black double shot cherry profile POM vintage keycaps as far as I remember. You would have to find them on ebay or something or research on which boards they came in order to get em.

edit: I just look it up, it seems you can buy POM keycaps new. The vintage one just stuck in my head for some reason.

So you use default vim bindings with dvorak? I use neovim and type in qgmlwy but I remapped the bindings in my config.

Well, you don’t. But let’s think about it. The micro controller in it could easily log your keys. But logging data without retrieving it is rather useless. Either the keyboard itself has hardware to send out the data or it sends the data via your computer. The first one is absurd, what is that supposed to be, a satellite connection? The second one is not any different from having any old keylogger installed on your computer. The keyboard does the first step of collecting the keystrokes but every keyboard does that. The program does the second step of sending the data out over the internet but every keylogger does that. So could the software bundled with it be a keylogger? Sure but probably not. Making a whole company and production line with a product just to distribute a keylogger is quite overkill and risky when found out. With this line of thinking any software you install could be a keylogger, which it can be but is probably not the case. In short, there is nothing special about a keyboard that makes it more likely to be a keylogger than any other device or software. If you are somehow paranoid about this you can build your own keyboard and flash your own firmware to its micro controller. I did that but not for the reason of keyloggers, I just wanted to design and build my own keyboard.

Something I cooked up, it’s a regular horizontal staggered board but other than that very similar to the Corne indeed.

I daily one with 42 keys and I almost never use 2 of them.

It is possible that the previous owner flashed firmware that doesn’t bind that key to anything. So the first thing to try would be flashing firmware that does bind the key. If that doesn’t work, the switch might be the problem. You could check on the back of the pcb if the soldering looks any different from the other keys. Even if it doesn’t you could reflow the key. If that doesn’t work you can unsolder the key and pull it out, open it up to see if anything is messed up like the contact leaf. You could try a different switch in that spot. If you put in a fresh key that works in the old spot and it still doesn’t work it might be the pcb. Maybe you need to reflow or replace the diode. If that doesn’t work it might be the contact pads on the pcb for the switch or the diode. When unsoldered and with the solder removed you should see a metallic ring around where the switch pin goes. If that is (partially) missing it will be trouble. It could also be the ‘wire’ that is etched into the pcb that goes from the pad to the controller. Either fixing the pad or jumping the wire is a bit more advanced (and a pain in the ass). I don’t have experience with that. Hopefully the problem is earlier in the chain. Good luck!

433 packages, impressive :) I’m stuck on 474 while keeping a working environment where I can do my things nicely. And that doesn’t count some hand compiled/written programs I have. Also, 175MiB of memory! I used to boot at around 400MB into my WM but over time it has gone up to a fat 600MB without changing anything :| Just nice to see someone going for a minimal system.

I always log in to my TTY. Have you tried setting your colour scheme before login? I have a mega janky setup where I add an OpenRC sysinit service that calls setvtrgb. The first lines of the startup log aren’t affected but most of them are. That way I can log in with a colour scheme consistent with that which comes after the login.

In my experience you can bend them back just fine. Especially if it is not a sharp bent.

Multiple people say the image is broken but I can see it just fine (I’m on PC/web).

Yes, I use vim :) The spacebar is basically split into four buttons. The rightmost one is actually space. The leftmost one is shift. This means I only need one shift key as I don’t need to alternate left and right shift. The keys with arrows on them are not actually arrow keys, I use arrow keys on a layer. The left one pointing right is enter when pressed and FN when held. the right one is is -_ when pressed and a layer key when held. All the the mods on the left work like that too: tab when pressed, mouse layer when held. 0 when pressed, superkey when held. Esc when pressed, ctrl when held.

Not OP but probably just the key next to the "’ key. The text on keycaps are just labels and do not dictate what the key does.

This changes the angle at which they meet your thumb. Many find this configuration more comfortable when they use mods instead of a spacebar kit. I do this too.

If you follow the github link (https://github.com/codybloemhard/eliza) you will find a picture of the matrix! I really like the upside down mods for space bars. It depends a bit on how you angle your hands when you type, but if I put the ‘space bar’ modifiers in their regular orientation, the edge will dig into my thumb. One thing I would do differently is the position of the screws. Two of the screws are right where my thumb comes down on the board when I press down the space bars. This was slightly irritating and I had to get used to it.