Love how larbs really helped with the learning curve. I had any barely programming experience and I am now working with my x configs and making my own recovery scripts after nuking my arch install for the 30th time.
I loved my Atreus. I haven't used it in a while because I didn't feel like re-wiring it to switch the A Star Micro to a Pro Micro - it's still running the origonal Dvorak keymap on TMK. Recently I got the Keyboardio version and plan to port my keymap to it soon.
The advantage of having a custom keyboard should be in my opinion directed towards having more keys rather than less keys. We can (somewhat) easily solve the submode patterns shown in the video with the regular cheap common keyboard while still maintaining compatibility between devices. To me, having e.g. brackets take 1 keypress rather than usual 2 would be a big selling point. Or better yet, about 20 or so programmable buttons on the sides of the device. Possibly with programmable LEDs for indication. Possibly, joystick-like buttons, to save space and put four or maybe even eight functions into one. Man I love buttons.
It eliminates strain from finger stretching to the function keys etc. Everything is in the home row. Also it just seems to be in a more appropriate scale than large ones, as our hands are small after all. Going for arrow/function keys/num pad with arm movements just doesn't seem that efficient. Music instruments are similar, as they both rely on finger combinations to create different notes/keys. A musician can creates a lot of things with finger/hands movement. I think it's more efficient in the long run, but the transition step is huge just like any music instruments.
Indeed, I hope i didn't come across as if I was advocating these huge ass "gaming" keyboards with a Windows Media Player button somewhere in the South Africa compared to where your hands sit. I meant more like mini-buttons on the edge of the device, or whatever else you could do to improve 1-click arsenal while still maintaining the hand positions in the home row.
I love chords (mod_X + mod_Y + button) and submodes (leader_buton_1, button_A, button_B - strings of keypresses rather than simultaneous press like a chord) as much as anyone, but they are always more expensive strain wise compared to binding that functionality to a single keypress. There's only so many single keypresses there is, and most of them are used as a leader key for certain strings of keypresses. Which is fine in many cases, but certain keys with very high usage (like double quotes or brackets) could benefit a lot from going from a chord to a single keypress. (e.g. round bracket buttons somewhere under Space).
Before I tried the Atreus I shared some of your reservations. However, with the Atreus, I've found that by having the fn layer enables easy pressing of all the keys that you mentioned. Since my hands never stray too far from the home row, it is very easy to type and edit arrays, strings , numbers, etc. The 'two' key presses of fn and the key are in many ways really one, in that the thumb acts independently of the other fingers, so the time and muscle memory are sort of packaged together. The biggest feature of the Atreus as opposed to other larger ergo-keyboards is the small size, this makes typing from your lap possible, which is *much* more comfortable than having the keyboard on the desk. Though there are Atreus variants with extra keys, so clearly some folks agree that additional keys are beneficial, but the 'vanilla' Atreus is working well for me for now.
The point of it is to bring the keys you use the most closer to your home row so you don't have to reach. You can put any key anywhere you want. You can also do things like where my caps lock would be on a standard keyboard is CTRL when I hold it and ESC when I tap it. Works great for VIM.
Vim check. Custom keyboard check( mostly stick to hhkb variants and 40% ortho). But i3- once you use tmux you don’t need a file manager, especially if your are running multiple machines in the same session
Yup, Vim8, hhkb-pro2, tmux . . . (docker and git[hub]) that's it. Get your term from vim8, switch windows/panes. For windows I have to add cygwin/mintty or MobaXterm too.
Pretty interesting topics here, but this guy is a bit of a mess. When he's explaining things I like and use, I feel like he's not accurately portraying them. With mechanical keyboards he talks about some sort of finger vibrations, then goes on to vaguely describe speed. He didn't mention that mechanical keys register their press partway down while rubber domes have to bottom out to register. I'm not even sure if some of what he said is true, it just seemed confusing. It seemed like he was getting at latency at one point which probably doesn't differ much between keyboards unless you go back to very old computers that were lower latency like the Apple II. I do like his excitement and that he wants to share it with the world. There's a lot of cool free software out there that most people don't know about. I just wish he was more coherent.
As he said, because it minimises horizontal finger movement, which is bad for your joints. If you take the time to learn to type on an ortholinear keyboard (which, honestly, if you're used to touch-typing, really shouldn't be that hard as your fingers are already where they should be) I can practically guarantee you'll notice your fingers feeling better after even just a week or two. (writing from an Ergodox btw.)
@@Cybolic when I got my ergodox I remember typing and my fingers hiting edges of the right or wrong keys. And when I have to switch back to normal keyboard I can imagine what it would do to my performance. Been touch typing over ten years I can't say I buy that horizontal finger movement argument. I will give it another try.
I used an ergodox for a few months and got used to the ortholinear layout after just a week or two. I'm back to staggered now because I gave the keyboard back to who I was borrowing it from, and I still really miss it. I plan to get another ortho board at some point. I'm using a Pok3r now, which is probably one of the best non-ortho non-split boards.
It takes a few weeks to get used to ortho but then it is a lot better for your hands. I have done the switch and would never go back. I do full ortho (fixed row-column grid) but can also use column staggered ortho.
@@KimSchulz could you explain why is ortholinear better exactly? What are the pros and cons. One big con for me is that most keyboards are not ortholinear.
If you have 300$ to spend on keyboard you should get yourself Kinesis Advantage. It's least portable, very far away from opensource as it's patented, it comes with some learning curve (2-5 weeks), but after that period you will be sorry about all the money thrown away on machines of torture which is traditional boards. Watching this video was quite a fun as every second board dude talking about clearly trying to mimic Advantage without breaking patent law and they pretty much suck at it :) I know it's hard to understand without having actual board for several weeks, but trust me, patented shape of Advantage makes THAT much of a difference.
Sorry bro, but the Kinesis patents expired in 2014 and other keyboards have taken the lead since then. check out Dactyl or even better Dactyl Manuform and you will see what I mean. I own all 3 (4 if you count both versions of Advantage) of them and Kinesis (advantage 1+2) are the least ergonomic of them.
Says something about the distribution of Linux he was running. I have had my current Linux installation for 4 years (when I last changed computer) and it has never failed me.
It just shows Linux is highly customizable and fully in your control, so if you do something wrong you have to clean it up. You are not limited to this single thing which you can't control at all and just have to love with. How does the saying go again? The computer is only as smart as its user and Linux completely reflects that. If you mess something up than most of the time yes, it is your fault
