Not All Linears Are The Same!

Typing out all the Harry Potter books would be crazy, right? What would be the point? Seems like a weird flex even by keyboard enthusiast standards. Yep, that's right. Typing it out once makes no sense. That's why I'm going to type out the books a few million times! For the benefit of humanity and especially of you, fellow keymap wizards. This is a demonstration of the power of alternative/custom layouts. Given the huge extent of this topic, we can barely scratch the surface here so consider this write-up a mere teaser. Imagine you are an aspiring writer with a brilliant idea, just about to start typing out your magnum opus, staring at a yet empty document on your screen. Cursor blinking, annoying orphan relatives locked up in the cupboard under the stairs. Your story, about a young boy who ends up saving the world, is quite complete. You "just" have to type out heaps of your manuscripts and notes: about 6.5 million keystrokes. Everything is prepared for the...

Figure 1: Not even all of these (mostly) KTT-made linears are the same! After all of my years of collecting, reviewing, and obsessing over switches, I can say with certainty that linear switches are the most misunderstood of all of the switch types. No, I’m not talking about mechanically either, as all of the claims of them “just going straight up and down” are somewhat kind of true. (Not too much though, don’t get that excited.) The part that is often misunderstood, though, is usually in what is being implied when people say that these switches just go straight up and down – “All linears might as well be the same.” If the title of this article didn’t make that obvious enough to you, I find that sort of idea to be completely and utterly wrong. The people who make these implications wouldn’t say that a Cherry MX Black is the same as a Novelkeys Cream switch? They also certainly wouldn’t ever claim that every Gateron-made linear is the same as every fancy TTC one out there...

“Anne Marie? Do the interns get Glocks?” asks Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) in Wes Anderson’s classic The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. “No” she replies without pausing from looking up from sunbathing… “they all share one.” If you’re new to director Wes Anderson and his collection of artsy, charming, and sometimes problematic but otherwise entertaining films, The Life Aquatic is a good place to start. Not because it’s his best work (The Royal Tenenbaums) or even his most approachable (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) … but because it is all of the things I described above and is a perfect example of what a Wes Anderson movie is. The actors, who make up his all-star casts are reduced (if that term can be used this way) into extensions of Anderson’s creative mind and play their parts to perfection. The plot is funny and also tragic, the music in the movie is completely unique and also instantly recognizable (Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs) and the movie blends dialogue and...

As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project. Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole. Mechanical Keyboards Introductory Topics Mechanical vs Membrane Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi) Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek) Keyboard Layouts Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol) What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try (dovenyi) Keymap Layout Analysis (Keymap wizardry: Typing out the Harry Potter saga)...

As I walk down the hall to my office each morning, I hear the discordant clattering of keys coming from my coworker’s office. In the hall… several doors down… I hear them. Like the loose teeth in my grandma’s poodle, barely hanging on, they rattle and heave. If anyone’s ever told you that mechanical keyboards are too loud, it’s simply because that person has become completely desensitized to the garbage-bomb that is the standard office computer keyboard. In the 1980’s and 90’s, it was common to hear the sound of unmitigated excellence when you walked into an office building. The rapid gunfire-like precision of a room full of high-quality computer keyboards firing in unison. Even in the early 2000’s when I worked in a south-side Chicago newspaper newsroom, it was still filled with such keyboards. Ten to fifteen years into their professional daily use, they were still magnificent in sound and feel. Punctual, clean, decisive. In those days, professional keyboards didn’t come...

Figure 1: I couldn't think of a more literal way to represent this article if I tried... Looking back just a few years ago, there’s no doubt that the huge influx of people that joined the hobby at the peak of the COVID pandemic were drawn to keyboards by way of YouTube, TikTok, and other audio-visual content platforms. Even as the output from these content creators has waned in recent months, their collective impact and legacy on the keyboard hobby is rather firmly etched in the history books. As a result of all of their sound tests, build logs, and opinion videos, the message is clear to any new person joining the hobby: mechanical keyboards are all about the sound. Thock this, clack that. Whether it’s keyboards, keycaps, or even singular switches, seemingly everyone new to the hobby meticulously pores over each component of their keyboard not in an attempt to figure out how it will feel in hand, but how it will sound as they’re furiously grinding their way out from...