What keyboard layout do you use?

QWERTY. i work on multiple environments that can't always be accessed remotely, so that means I'm physically moving to different computers daily. It's better for me to use the most common layout so that there's as much consistency between systems as possible

28

QWERTY on a cheap Dell keyboard I've had for 12 years.

I'm sure some of the alternatives are objectively superior, but with all due respect to enthusiasts, I'm simply not passionate about it and have yet to be convinced that the time and pain spent on getting used to a new layout would actually be worth it in the long run.

20

Dvorak. Have been for years. Way less work to type the same speed as QWERTY.

18

Yup, plus don't get coworkers "just needing my screen for a quick thing". Win win!

8
My username approves.

3

My keyboard lays out flat on my desk. I don't unfold the little legs underneath.

16

Pet theory: most Dvorak users were, in their pre-enlightenment lives, messy freestyle 3-finger typists. If you ever went to the trouble of formally learning to touch-type Qwerty, moving to another layout just seems impossibly foreboding. No way.

10

You become multilingual. It doesn't transfer the same way you think. I type dvorak at home, qwerty at work, and qwerty on mobile. My brain somehow knows when to switch. The most common slip up I run into is that my brain gets confused with a laptop and sometimes I mix the two.

5
Pet theory: most Dvorak users were, in their pre-enlightenment lives, messy freestyle 3-finger typists.

Given that Dvorak tries to maximize alternating hands when typing consecutive characters [1], that theory definitely feels plausible given that the "hunt-and-peck" style for typing naturally seems to work with alternating hands. I think the same idea could also be applied to mobile typing as you only have two thumbs — perhaps Dvorak would lend itself well to mobile typing?

References

"Dvorak keyboard layout". Wikipedia. Accessed: 2024-08-10T23:00Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout#Overview

Letters should be typed by alternating between hands (which makes typing more rhythmic, increases speed, reduces error, and reduces fatigue).

If you ever went to the trouble of formally learning to touch-type Qwerty, moving to another layout just seems impossibly foreboding.

It's not that bad. By my experience, having gone from QWERTY to Dvorak to Colemak to Workman, it takes maybe an hour to memorize the keys, then it's just a matter of practicing by using it. You will progressively get faster and faster as it becomes second nature. To get to full typing speed and for it to feel completely natural, however, it will likely take a month, depending on how often and how much one types.

Something interesting that I noticed, though, is that it seems that the brain is only to be able to know one keyboard layout well at a time. If I learn a new layout, I don't maintain my skill with the previous layout minus the skill lost due to lack of practice. It almost feels entirely zero-sum. As I gain skill in one keyboard layout, I seem to equally lose skill in the previously known keyboard layout. I do try and maintain some level of proficiency with QWERTY, given that it is still the standard and is the most common, but it takes considerably more effort. It seems to be less acquiring a new skill and more rewiring the brain.
4
- I use semimak mainly but use qwerty often and I feel like there's no problem with using both at all. This is just my experience though. When I first learned Dvorak and dropped qwerty I completely lost qwerty but it came back really easily later when I started using it more
  
  2
You're absolutely right in my case. I somehow got really fast at three finger hunt and peck, and could do it without looking. But, my form was all over the place and the amount of wrist movement was causing me major wrist issues. I knew I could never unlearn my terrible qwerty technique, but I needed to learn proper touch typing, so I learned Dvorak

1
- Interesting. Apart from the wrist issue, the strain of constantly moving one's eyes from keyboard to screen and back is really underestimated IMO. To be able to keep your eyes fixed on one place while typing is a serious luxury. I sometimes think that learning to touch-type when I was 17 was the single most useful thing I have ever done. It took a week. And then, as I remember, just a few months to overtake my former typing speed.
  
  1

Why does workman have a different layout for Linux? That’s a headache for people who dual boot

9

What do you mean? It's just a layout. How would it vary depending on the OS?

1
- Under pros and cons:
  
  Capslock is Backspace (Linux only) Shift+Capslock is Escape (Linux only)
  
  3

Dvorak. I switched back in 2005 from qwerty and never looked back. I never looked forward either, so I may try out Colemak at some point in time. Workman looks solid for English, but I am not a native English speaker.

8

Quick! Type my username with one finger :)

6
- :-)
  
  2
Workman looks solid for English

Yeah, afaik, Workman was specifically designed for English. The official website for Workman doesn't appear to specifically state that it was designed for only English, but there are a few small statements scattered throughout that hint at the theory that it was designed for English.

1
I tried dvorak in 2008 and was using it for about 6 months. The thing that really tripped me was the keyboard shortcuts. I was just too used to the QWERTY setup. Did you have to overcome this, and if so, how?

1
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11688016
  
  1
- I think I always thought about shortcuts as consisting of their constituent parts, rather than a key shape that does an action. So when I switched, my brain still thought Ctrl+c, C just moved
  
  1

Dvorak exclusively. This thread is the most I've heard of other people using it. To date, I've met 2 people who have HEARD of it, but no one else who uses it

8

Been trying Colemak-DH but I'll have to use it for at least half a year till I can give it a proper review

7

Colemak

7

Querty with a 55 key ortholinear split keyboard aligned at almost a 90 degree angle.

Most of the complaints I hear about keyboard setups could be solved by either completely remapping the keys or, if you really need to not move your hands around, investing in one of these.

6

Oh no. I didn't need to know about the Svalboard. I thought I'd got to endgame with the Glove80. 😬

4
My split ortholinear keyboard has been a game changer for the wrist pain I've been dealing with

3
The svalboard looks awesome. I'm going to look into that. Also the l and the b have a funny animation on that site :D

1

Dvorak to touch-type but qwerty on my phone's virtual keyboard.

6

Dvorak for over thirty years; always used swipe typing with QWERTY on mobile devices

5

Dvorak since Dec 2010. Between semesters, I was just checking it out, not planning to stick with it at all. But, I really liked it, so I spent the rest of the semester break learning Dvorak and never looked back.

I met another dvorak user at work. I made a git commit that was meant to eventually be squashed with the message aoeu, which apparently gave me away. My coworker then asked me if I typed in Dvorak; not immediately recalling the commit message, I was quite astonished; how tf did you know that? Turns out, he typed in Dvorak too.

6

Colemak-DH using an Atreus from keeboard.io

5

My username should be a giveaway...

5

Dvorak with some custom bindings for German diacritics and the Euro symbol, e.g. AltGr+a gives me ä.

Furthermore, my layout behaves like QWERTY when I told down Ctrl, so that shortcuts like Ctrl+C are still easy to press.

Switching to Dvorak immediately removed any pain I had started experiencing more and more often typing with QWERTY. In the long run it also improved my typing speed. I can usually achieve between 130 and 140.

5

Nice there is a great keyboard layout creator for windows.

If you use linux do you mind sharing your custom layout and how you did it?

2
- On Windows it's pretty easy. On Linux I found some shady kernel monkey patch for the Ctrl feature, but I don't remember where.
  
  2

ANSI QWERTY.

It's the standard layout in my part of the world, and my ability to walk up to any PC in the land and comfortably type outweigh any advantages other layouts would have.

5

I use the Swedish layout.

Fun fact, if you are lazy when setting up a new computer with a Swedish keyboard, you can just pick the Finnish layout instead, they are identical and you won't need to scroll as far down.

As for the physical keyboard I use, I currently use a Ducky One 2 Skyline keybord with the absolutely gorgeous Trailblazer keycap set:

https://www.alohakb.com/en-se/products/alohakb-trailblazer-cherry-profile-keycaps

It is my first custom keycap set I have bought, and damn, it is just fantastic.

5

dvorak.used to feel keyboard strain after typing for a long time, dvorak fixed that

4

Dvorak, but the one that uses UK punctuation.

It doesn't exist on Windows. Did you know that making custom keyboard layouts on windows is a pain?

4

Dvorak. The same as others have posted, I started to type for a living and started to feel the numbness in my hands as I read up on RSI. I switched to Dvorak on my phone then eventually to desktop.

I'm willing to take a gander at the Workman layout.

4

Bepo

3

QWERTY. Jealous?

3

I feel like there is going to be a disproportionate amount of people not using a standard qwerty keyboard that replies to this :)

I use qwerty on a standard 100% and another split 60%. I am trying to switch to ortholinear split Dvorak, but haven't been able to design a keyboard I am comfortable switching to full time. I would also need two of them, one for home, one for work.

3

I feel like there is going to be a disproportionate amount of people not using a standard qwerty keyboard that replies to this :)

Ha, likely true. There are certainly many biases at play here, but I'm still curious of the results regardless of them.

1

I like my keyboards like I like my Captain Bluebear characters. Qwert Zuiopü.

3

Dvorak. I find it much more comfortable and performant than QWERTY.

I’m not a fan of how accented vowels are achieved so I created a custom layout using Ukelele (macOS). That said, I haven’t installed that custom variant on my current setup and am just achieving accented characters the standard way. I should do something about that.

3

I’m not a fan of how accented vowels are achieved

I personally use a compose key to accomplish accents.

2
- I’m doing that currently, but as a touch typist it really slows me down since most words have an accented character in my language.
  
  2

Qwertz 🇩🇪

3

I've tried Dvorak and Workman but switched to Colemak-DH about a year ago just for fun and to try something new (I have a split ortho keyboard with XDA keycaps so the profile is uniform).

Works great, but my typing speed dropped by about 40 WPM from the low 110s to the mid-70s and I haven't had enough time to practice and get back up there. Previous layouts have required at least a few months of practice with Monkeytype or Keybr and I've been too busy.

3

Also made a huge effort to switch to Colemak-DH a few months ago then started moving around a bunch with little space to setup my split ergo and will take a huge hit getting started again :/

2
I’ve tried Dvorak and Workman but switched to Colemak-DH about a year ago

What's your preference of the 3?

1
- Hmm, you know, I think I liked Workman the most. Colemak has been the most difficult to adapt to, but I'm not sure if it's because I had been away from QWERTY for so long (Colemak has a lot of keys in common with QWERTY) or because the layout has keys in locations that I don't find the most intuitive.
  
  Honestly, if I'm still hovering around 80 WPM for much longer it might actually be a good move to switch back to Workman, lol. Dvorak was probably the best IMO for reducing finger and wrist movement and strain if that's a concern for you.
  
  2

I now just use EurKey (Qwerty) with a very nice Alice (Arisu) keyboard. If that was all I was using I would probably try the eurkey variant of Colemak(-DH) at some point.

2

I live in a qwertz ISO layout country, but I use qwerty ANSI layout keyboards because I find that text editing is better with them. Makes finding a laptop pretty hard though.

2

If you have the layout memorized, then what's physically shown on the keys doesn't really matter — usually switching the keyboard layout in the OS is pretty easy.

2
I got lucky that an american friend who brought a Thinkpad from the states gifted that to me. But in general it's not a bad option to buy used thinkpads and just replacing the keyboard. Still a bit more expensive than if that was a common option, though, of course.

2

I've been using Dvorak since the late 90's. When I type on a qwerty keyboard, it feels like my fingers have to fly all over the place to hit all the keys.

With that said, Dvorak has a few gremlins. The most annoying are the y/f keys where I have to shift my hands slightly to hit those keys. The copy/paste ctrl-c and ctrl-v keyboard shortcuts are also a lot less convenient but I just deal with it. It's also annoying having to rebind keys in pretty much every keyboard-heavy game.

I've never really thought of Colemak as a big enough improvement over Dvorak to relearn how to type on that layout, though if you're looking to switch from qwerty it may be worth considering. The Workman layout seems interesting.

2

The copy/paste ctrl-c and ctrl-v keyboard shortcuts are also a lot less convenient but I just deal with it.

Thankfully, these were only shifted one to the right in Workman.

It’s also annoying having to rebind keys in pretty much every keyboard-heavy game.

Yeah I've gotten used to that. I sometimes will do a software switch in the OS back to QWERTY if I'm playing games (my layout is determined by the OS setting rather than hardware) so that I don't have to rebind, but it doesn't always seem to work. At the very least, I don't think you can do a layout switch while the game is running. Some games also appear to intercept raw keyboard codes rather than what's being sent by the OS so they ignore the software keyboard layout anyways.

1

I use Dvorak on a 36 key split ortholinear keyboard

2

ANSI QWERTY TKL. Despite living in Germany, where we usually use ISO. I got used to it when I spent a year in the states and realized how useful it is for writing code. Now I have the differences to the German layout memorized pretty well so I just switch in software whenever I need German characters like ä or ß.

2

QWERTY.

I tried Dvorak when I started having RSI issues, but found no improvement after a year, so I switched back. Others clearly have different experiences. 🤷‍♂️

2

Programmers Dvorak

2

Wicki-Hayden and Terpstra. Life-changing! Try them:

https://keyboard.snelgrove.science/

1

QWERTY, ЙЦУКЕН, and Danish. The Danish one is the most idiotic. For example:

The brackets are almost at the same place, but they are moved one ley to the side - it's pure fucking evil!
To type "@", you need AltGr, and that's the only case where it's used

1

I use a modified Dvorak on the ZSA Moonlander mark l

1

QWERTY, English UK.

My country is filled with AZERTY keyboards though. No, it's not France.

1

My own custom layout that tries to find a compromise between not fucking too much with the left side keys because of hotkeys, typing en and my mother tongue, and programming.

Also use 28 keys split keyboard, so some macros for some keys.

0

I swear if one of you French bastards says AZERTY, I'm gonna bring the hammer down.

0

AZERTY-BE 🇧🇪 With all the text written in English as it's used by french, dutch and german speaking people. For some reasons most of the symbols are at different places than the AZERTY-FR

1