I’m fucking stoked to see so many people like me (who are pissed at how corporations fuck their own product just to make more money) migrate over here. For once I feel like I actually have a way to “protest” corporations and their greed. I know the vast majority of Reddit users didn’t care, but I know many of us are here to break free from all of that tomfoolery. Just happy to be apart of it. Don’t know how long it will last, but I’m hoping that it does.

This is why I’m here finally. I didn’t hear about this until the Reddit shenanigans. Finally took the plunge.

This layout is called Colemak-DH, which is a slightly optimized variant of the original Colemak layout.

It was designed to make typing more efficient for your fingers than QWERTY. If you were to analyze the top ten thousand words or so in English, you’d start to notice lots of common bi-grams and tri-grams (two and three letter combinations). Colemak looks to optimize the position of the keys such that these n-grams are typed by “rolling” your fingers from one side of the keyboard to the other. In addition, it places a lot of other common letters in intelligent positions to reduce finger travel. Over longer periods of typing, your total finger travel across the keyboard is greatly reduced in comparison to QWERTY.

In theory, you can type faster on this layout, but in my experience that’s not necessarily true (I type the same speed on Colemak vs QWERTY). But it does feel so fucking good to type on. That alone should be reason enough to consider learning it.

˙ʇı plǝıʍ oʇ ʍoɥ ʍouʞ ʇou op oɥʍ ǝsoɥʇ oʇ snoɹǝƃuɐp sı ɹǝʍod ǝuo ǝɥ⊥

Sorry y’all. I uploaded an upside down image. I can’t figure out how to delete the post on wefwef lol

Atreus keyboard by Keyboardio. Key caps are Susuwatari ortho set plus Colemak set by Drop.com

So, I never learned how to touch type on a standard QWERTY layout. When I got into ergo splits I need to learn how to touch type and decided to take the opportunity to learn an alternative layout. I chose Colemak DH.

Now I have two types of muscle memory. One that’s a janky peck style typing for QWERTY, the other pure touch typing for Colemak split keyboards.

I wish I could live in Switzerland. I visited before Covid and I could not get over how beautiful their landscape is.

Sup fellow Lemmings. Hope you enjoy your stay.

Windows 10 primarily due to work requirements. I have a laptop with Xubuntu for personal use.

An Atreus 62.

More keys than I need honestly. Half of the lower keys aren’t actually bound to anything.

The Atreus keyboard by Keyboardio with Susuwatari key caps made by Drop.com.

This is my current daily driver as a full time developer. I was happy with the default setup but had to switch a few things around due to using Colemak-DH layout. Some of the thumb keys had to be placed upside down due to the MT3 profile being angled too extreme for comfort with this layout. The original keyboard came with XDA profile keycaps. I’ll be returning to the original keycaps once I finish building a different split ergo keyboard.

Oh wow you unlocked a memory I didn’t know I had.

I can’t say that I am an expert on the science, but theoretically less finger travel might reduce repeated stress injury. I don’t know if it has been scientifically shown that Colemak helps reduce RSI in comparison to QWERTY.

From my personal experience, Colemak feels significantly more comfortable to type on. When I switch back to QWERTY, I feel like my fingers are all “spidery” in nature, stretching out and crawling all around the keyboard.

The design of the keyboards I type on in general also help improve ergonomics, but regardless if I typed on standard row staggered keyboards I’d still choose Colemak over QWERTY.

Heheh

As usual, the keyboard you choose will depend on your use case and personal preference of feel.

I’ve used a Ferris Sweep and a Corne. The Ferris sweep had too little keys in my opinion. I didn’t like bouncing between multiple layers to get to symbols and numbers and function keys. I found that i was getting lost in between layers often and the mental overhead was just uncomfortable to me. Some people swear by 34 keys. Just not for me.

I liked the Corne much better. The extra column meant I could bind those to common modifier keys like ctrl, alt, and super/windows, as well as have a dedicated escape, tab, and del. The extra thumbs meant I could have shift, backspace, space, and two layer keys.

As I was using the Corne more I decided that I didn’t like having two layer keys since I was accidentally pressing the incorrect layer key for what I wanted. My brain had this urge to only want to use one layer key to access symbols and numbers. I also couldn’t get a comfortable position for the arrow keys around the symbols and numbers. I had just ever so slightly too few keys.

So then I tried out this one, the Atreus. It’s similar to the Corne but features a couple more keys, which allows for more common symbols to placed on the default layer. This gave me room for arrow keys on the second layer as well as the numbers and other symbols. Now, I only need one layer key to access most of what I need for my development work.

My only issue currently with this keyboard is that, at least how I have mine currently setup, the ; key is on the bottom most row where the down arrow in the picture is. I find that my muscle memory isn’t quite there and I often hit adjacent keys when trying to hit the semicolon. But I imagine that will smooth out once I use this more. I also notice that my right wrist isn’t all that happy. It wasn’t happy before typing on a standard keyboard. This Atreus isn’t fully split so I can’t angle it exactly how I want it for ergonomics.

That being said I’ve been typing on the Atreus for about three weeks now and I can say that so far this is my favorite layout. It has just the right amount of keys for me. I’m going to experiment with another split keyboard that similar number of keys on each side, but fully split. I haven’t decided yet what that will be.

I use a left thumb for shift and prefer it to home row mods.

Looks great. Nice color choice.

I’ve dropped qwerty from my regular use after learning colemak but I can still type just fine on qwerty.

After learning Dvorak, why are you switching to another? Just for fun?

I’ll never forget booting up Metroid Prime for the first time as a kid. That intro menu music still haunts me.

Those caps are gorgeous!