pixelprimer
I may or may not like ever smaller unibody keyboards. Grumpy is next then hopefully a 26 key.
Happy to answer as someone on the low key count side, simply put the benefit for me is comfort. Having a two key inner column reduces that awkward reach which is a pretty big improvement. I personally have pinkie pain so reducing pinkie keys completely down to just one key each lowers load and any reaches.
As noted you get rid of having dedicated keys as a side effect. By design those keys are low frequency or fit well with combos. Q and Z for example are super uncommon.
V is an almost a special case that works really well as a combo. V almost exclusively interacts with vowels, especially “e” and “i”. So with optimized layouts, it gets pushed to one of the worse positions on the consonant side. Usually top pinky or top inner.
The combo position is easier to reach and use over the pinkie or inner index. It is predictably preceded and followed by a vowel (or space), it is easy to keep a typing flow with the combo. (This V explanation is stolen and reworded from jcmkk3)
I’d say the same for / and quotes ring and middle move together and those combos are very comfortable compared to using your pinkies or at least my pinkies.
Great job. I’m so happy the Cheapino is getting popular, amazing to have such a low cost to try out and get access to ergonomic keyboards. Now that I’ve got used to mine I can justify upgrading to a Charybdis nano knowing I’ll use it and 34-35 keys is usable.
Designed in Ergogen and KiCAD. Basically remade the Zilpzalp using the rufous Ergogen config then cut down the thumbs. Build the rest with jcmkk3’s great footprints and using the hummingbird matrix. Made firmware for ZMK but should also just work with standard hummingbird firmware. Lot’s of love to apfel, weteor, and PJE66 as well.
I was at a similar place with colemak-dh plus a swap to ergo. Stuck at 60 wpm for a while. I stopped testing for a few months just typing for work and then did a test and hit 80WPM I think 60 shows good comfort and then just more time you’ll get faster
PopOS is definitely a great first choice distribution. I would recommend Linux Mint over it for people coming from windows who wants something rock solid with a great community
netstat curl and git
