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[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

Mechanical keyboards have several (clicky/thocky/tactile/linear/etc switches, Cherry MX Browns, etc), but if I had to choose one, maybe ortholinear vs staggered.

A picture will probably illustrate it best:

A staggered keyboard and an ortholinear keyboard. The staggered keyboard has keys that don't line up with keys on the rows above and below but are instead "staggered" relative to the rows above and below. The ortholinear keyboard is laid out in a more perfect "grid" where every key lines up with the keys in the rows above and below it.

Ortholinear evangelists contend that the staggered layout was invented for mechanical typewriters exclusively to reduce the incidence of typebar collisions and is detrimental to optimal ergonomics. I, as someone who prefers staggered keyboards, just don't want to be ruined for the majority of keyboards out there. (If my muscle memory "learns" that "m" is "here" because I use an ortholinear keyboard at home, I'm worried it'll be awkward to use a standard keyboard on a laptop or whatever and I'll be fat-fingering keys all over the place.) I might switch sides someday. Who knows. But for now, I'll stick with staggered.

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

As an undergrad, I worked in the university's tech support dept. We had one person come in--I think he was a computer engineer--and set his keyboard to Dvorak each day. Then he'd just leave and nobody else could use that computer until he'd come back and we'd yell at him.

[-] scintilla@crust.piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago

As someone who has switched back and forth from a split ortho board and a "regular" keyboard depending on vibes it's not actually that bad. I learned colemak dh on the ortho though and can not use it on the regular keyboard for some reason so you might have a point to some extent.

[-] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 3 days ago

Reminds me it's been a while since I posted to !mechanical_keyboards@programming.dev

this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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