Optical? Analog? Keyboard for Linux?

I never tried one, but want to, but I am worried that the analog functionality will not work well (if at all) on Linux. (I am on Fedora sever with Cosmic desktop, to be quite minimal desktop setup.) I need number pad on the keyboard.

Can you recommend some keyboard options? Or do you think, that it is an useless gimmick?

I personally have moved entirely to keyboards with Hall effect (magnetic) switches, and no longer consider “mechanical” switches. Makes it easy to set the activation/release point, and are very smooth.

There are lots of very affordable options, some being sub $100, at least in the US.

Are they not just a series of xinput axes? (i dont own one, but they sound neat)

Maybe put your money towards a Keychron keyboard. They are at least open about supporting linux

One more vore for Keychron Hall Effect here.

I bought a K4HE last winter. Could not be happier. There is also the K10HE if you want something more full size.

Seriously, pressing the key 10% of the way for activation is amazing and you can “train” the keyboard to your ideal weights - but just retraining for the 10% light touch typing made me realize what touch typing should be like.

:open_mouth: When trying to order Keychron K10 HE, I found out, that they do not offer Czech layout, and that R1 and R3 keys can not be swapped (QWERTZ, instead of QWERTY), so there seems to be no way, to get one especially with “shine-trough” key caps.

Any other ideas? Suggestions?

Hmm, the actual caps can probably be printed for a small penny, AFAIK all keycaps can be replaced.

If the layout Czech layout is a standard 105 EU or 104 US layout, then there should be no problem to simply rewire the keys via a locale. And do check out your local suppliers. MediaMarkt here in Sweden sells them in retail with Swedish layout so if you can find them in retail in your country it should work.

Otherwise, there are other brands. Heard good things about Ducky for instance.

Rewiring keys in SW is easy, but replacing R3 key cap Y with R1 Z will not fit, and it looks like, they do not sell R3 Z, or R1 Y. :frowning:

I found an retailer that had at least “small” letter on the keys for K10 HE.

The launcher does not work on my Linux (probably because of permissions to access rawhid)

Tried this?

1 Like

No I did not find that one, when trying to figure out how to fix it, thank you very much.

Yeah, there is almost always a workaround, but it takes a while to find the workaround sometimes :slight_smile:

Things will most probably get better within a year or two. But for now, Linux support is still in this perception of “some neckbeards run it and that’s about it”. Linux is going more and more mainstream.

I know… if you would tell me, I will be able to do over 95% of personal stuff on Linux just a month ago, I would laugh at you and explain, that my hopes aren’t that high…

But just a month later new keyboard is one of few reasons to run windows, which is crazy…

Linux experience is kind of bad in many ways, but Microslop managed to make Windows so bad, that I am ok-ish with 10 FPS instead of running on Windows.

Hmmm, 10 FPS on Linux? You are most probably doing something wrong then.

Double check your drivers, it sounds like you are running Nouveau instead of the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

AMD and Intel are FOSS these days so acceleration works out of box with their cards. Nvidia stubbornly refuse to let go of their proprietary driver stack, though inroads are slowly being made now.

On laptop with intel GPU, running windows debugger attached to windows game, I have a patched DLL in, that is resource heavy even on good days. So yea 10 FPS is not great, but I know it did not even run just 2 years ago, and needed a full VM with GPU pass-trough, to get worse experience, that on windows, but that balance shifted a lot in last few years….

Running another game, just to play it is fine. (Just to be clear, that the 10 FPS was the most crazy scenario actually running, not an average experience.)

1 Like