Hey there,
I’ve been doing a lot of typing lately on my shitty old Compaq keyboard (it has a good build quality, but keys require relatively much force to be pressed) and I experience some discomfort in my fingers.
Would anybody suggest any specific keyboard or keyboard type that would help me ease the strain? I know absolutely nothing about keyboards lol!
In addition to hardware recommendations that others make, if you aren’t using Dvorak it may help. The evidence is entirely anecdotal but it did help me.
Did it take a long time for you to learn Dvorak?
If you want to consider switching layouts I would look into Colemak, it is basically qwerty changed, so you get most of the benefits of Dvorak but much easier to learn.
It took me about a month of effort in my final year of engineering school so I was getting a ton of practice. I also have a weird brain thing so I can’t code switch great so unlike most people I did drastically reduce QWERTY ability when touch typing. But my wrists don’t hurt as easily anymore
Thanks, I can finally feel like my grandma when trying to figure out which key to press. That’s fun (it really is).
Lol yeah but no it definitely is fun especially when you have to confuse IT people with your weird requests
I hope you didn’t take it the wrong way, I really meant that I enjoy learning it. I decided to go with Colemak, though.
That’s fair. I never did much research on Colemak but no keyboard layout is right for everyone. You’re trying a more human focused layout though. I’m happy whenever anyone does that. Dvorak nerds are like linux nerds that way, we just want people to ask questions and decide on the tools that are actually right for them instead of what’s just the default.
Good luck with the pain!
Edit: ok it looks like a good compromise between design goals. I’m still grateful I have my tap-tap switch hand pattern and vowel row, but I absolutely understand why people would be drawn to it
What did you mean by tap-tap switch hand pattern? 🙂
That’s the way I also suggest to everyone! When it comes to tinkering with software, GNU/Linux is very good and encourages the user to learn much more efficiently than it’s closed software counterparts. Since discovering it I can no longer find any joy in using Windows, really.
Do you by any chance use Vi(m) or Emacs? I can already tell that Colemak (and Dvorak surely too) is superior to QWERTY, but my setup relies heavily on keyboard and I wonder what would be the best approach to setting up keybindings. That’s the only reason why I didn’t fully switch, yet.
No i actually just started dual booting linux last week (Garuda). Personally I just adapted my key patterns so yeah copy and paste aren’t next to each other but I know them.
Tap tap switch hand refers to the general dvorak rhythm. In general it tried to get closer to two taps with a hand at a time. This results in a lot of common letter pairings being on the same hand