Hi All,
I’m looking for a new mechanical keyboard. Hoping for some advice. I used to have a Corsair K70 Pro, but unfortunately that no longer functions. I’ve been using a crappy dell keyboard from work and have finally been annoyed enough by it to buy a new keyboard.
I’ve considered going with another K70, but corsair doesn’t give a shit about linux and I’m kicking windows outta my house. While I could emulate or build a vm, I’d rather just get a keyboard that doesn’t make linux an afterthought if thought of at all. What I like about the K70 is that the keys aren’t shrouded making it super easy to
Wants are:
- 100% full keyboard
- Ideally no shrouding around the switches, minor shrouding would be okay.
- A passthrough USB port on the keyboard for a mouse, to minimize wires and simpliy cable management.
- Hotswap switches
- Full Linux support
- Backlit (ideally RGB, but I"m not doing any fancy profiles, just a solid color)
- Media keys nice, but I can live without them.
- Ideally not much more than $200
I’d prefer prebuilt, but at most minimal soldering would be acceptable, as long as it’s nothing too small, my soldering skills are an embarrassment.
I’ve looked at the following already.
Ducky All models I saw shrouded the switches. seem shrouded.
System76 Cost seems excessive and I don’t really want a 96% keyboard.
DasKeyboard & Keychron The models pretty much all shroud the switches too much, or they’re low form factor.
The DasKeyboard 5QS comes close, and I might just go with it if I don’t have a better option, but it’s got more shrouding around the switches than I like. It also doesn’t seem to have a secondary USB port.
I just saw this as well. I really like the bigger one on the left, would just need to be a full keyboard, maybe an additional USB port on the back as well. https://lemmy.ml/post/10016605
Wooting Two HE.
It’s a gaming keyboard, but I bought mine for typing as fast as possible in Vim / Linux professionally and it’s fantastic for that too. it offers full Linux support (incl. API if you want to roll your own application), analog switches that are buttery-smooth, and cute RGB animations.
It’s not half-bad for gaming too 🙂
This looks like it ticks most of the boxes. I’ll have to add it to the list. I think the only drawback is I can’t order it on amazon to try with little to no risk. On the other hand, I’d prefer to buy direct anyway.
I don’t see any mention of hot-swappability and I doubt you’d find many HE switches for it anyway …
They are hot-swappable
Here’s a quote from their website. This indicates to me that at least at the time of writing there would be very limited options, which isn’t probably great for me since I have a couple switches in mind.
"At this time there are no other available brands with magnet switches that are compatible.
Wooting HE keyboards have hall-sensors on the PCBA to detect movement from a magnet inside the Lekker switch. Without the magnet it can’t detect the switch.
It is not possible to use any other technology switch."
I think I’ll skip this one. It looks great, but without the ability to get other switches and a couple other missing features, I don’t think it’ll fit within requirements :/ Specifically the noise requirement that the GF has.
In fairness, you did ask that the keyboard have hot-swappable switches: the Wooting does, it’s just that you can only swap the switches with the same switches. I didn’t deceive you 🙂