Yesterday my wrist was in a lot of pain, and started swelling. I put it on ice and started looking for a new keyboard. It is so obvious that the strain from pressing enter with my right pinky, as well as reaching for the mouse, is too much.
Jason pointed out this deal on the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. $28 bucks with shipping, so I am gonna try that. I am also looking at the Wacom Bamboo tablets to replace my mouse. After using mobile devices with touchscreens, it seems silly to clutch and press a chunk of plastic.
I will report back how well these work with GNU/Linux/GNOME.
A bunch of my coworkers use keyboards with a square layout with enter and backspace in the middle. I THINK it’s this: TypeMatrix Ergonomic Keyboard …. at least it looks like it. Some use dvorak with it, some use qwerty. They’ve got flexible coverings so you can switch what letters are shown. Another neat feature is that they have hardware switching, so we can pair program with the OS in qwerty, me using a regular qwerty keyboard, and my pair using one of those fancy keyboards switched to dvorak. haha.
Woah! I just noticed the background of your blog. Cloudy sky and a rock! Did you take this picture?
I ended up just changing my lifestyle, and that went a long way to healing my wrists. I type a whole lot, but on keyboards that fit me, and with a decent posture for prolonged writing sessions.
Hilariously, I recently purchased, um, “Wacom technology”, via a Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. And I use the “S Pen” that comes with the device, which works fine in LineageOS, and is really interesting to use. I don’t like it is a proprietary technology, it means I can’t trust it because a company holds the sole interest of the tech. But it isn’t ergonomically poor, it works quite well.
If I were loyal to brands I’d probably grab the Lamy EMR pen (EMR technology | Lamy). On the other hand… what if I confused it with my Lamy ink pens?!
That think is a tank, and I still have it. It became part of my IT toolkit: USB keyboards are very useful when dealing with hardware from the last decade. And I’m not worried about it breaking, it’s that kinda rugged.
