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Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard
(go.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Mechanical Keyboards
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Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
If so, this community is for you!
Here you can discuss everything about mechanical keyboards (and only mechanical keyboards).
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founded 4 years ago
Pretty much any of them will outlive you. All you are looking for is your preferences - if you don't have any, then you don't have to worry. Some people like key switches to be linear, some like ones that have a tactile feeling to them, others like them to be really clicky audibly. Some people just want it to plug in with a USB cable, others prefer bluetooth, others want 2.4 GHz wireless, some people want it to be capable of all 3. Some people want key caps that are aesthetically pleasing, others want ones that show the bindings for non-latin characters, some people want really big letters, or none at all. Some people want a non-qwerty layout, some want the qwerty layout but with variations like a split shift key, numpad + key, spacebar. Some people like the spacebar to be longer instead of having a right alt key, some want to have an F13 key. Others want really small portable keyboards instead of a fullsize, some want them to be light or heavy.
This goes on and on and on, it's all about what you want and what you like, and the fact that if you treat it right you never need another keyboard unless you pour a glass of water onto it.
Do you have any recommendations for custom keyboard providers? Or do you customize them yourself?
Keychron has some good entry points for getting into the mechanical keyboard scene. Lots of layout options, some open source keyboard firmware support, and you can buy a lot of them barebones if you want to bring your own keys and caps.
Thank you! I was hoping there was some kind of tool I could leverage.
The couple I have built are mostly built by myself with some outside suggestions from a friend. Usually you are safe to browse anything so long as you can find some legitimate user reviews (Video reviews preferably) - pre-orders, and especially group buys can be risky. This goes for parts as well as full boards. It's also good to look into whether the seller has good documentation/a build guide if the keyboard does nifty things that are not very standard. I just got a QwertyKeys QK101 which I finished building last night - I can verify that they as a seller were really quite fast as far as delivery goes, and the board is working quite nicely, has some really neat magnetic connections inside that connects the battery to the PCB and the PCB to the screen which made that really easy. Also hot swappable for the switches, so I didnt have solder anything. Have also heard pretty good things about their other boards. For switches I use a seller called RNDKBD, and for caps I usually look at DeskHero or CanonKeys.
I made a post with a picture and part list you can see on my profile.
Thank you, I'll check it out! Thank you for all the information, as well!