What switches does it have? Are they lubed? Are the stabilisers modded? Does it have case foam or other case mods? What type of mount is it? What about the plate? Swing weight and force curve? Linear, clicky or tactile? Silent, oring, ball bearing mod?

There are so many different variables and that’s before you even get to layout changes it’s perfectly possible to build your own keyboard that is perfect or close to it for you.

I have keyboards with different layouts and typing feel that I pick for how I want my typing to feel on any given day. It’s no different from a guitarist having multiple different guitars chasing a different feel and sound.

Not everyone is going to appreciate it and that’s perfectly fine, but there are significant differences with the right changes during a build.

I use powershell by default on windows and I prefer it for scripting any day of the week vs. shell scripts. It’s not the fastest but you can always plug in .net to your scripts to dramatically improve performance. Sure, I could write the script in rust or whatever to make it even faster, but that’s way more work than I need for the lifespan of the script.

While at university I did a lot of work on the SPARCs and this lead to Unix development as an early career for me. I moved into the windows world after that and I missed Unix so I picked up Linux around 98. I installed it on my work laptop of all things and made everything I needed work. Never looked back since although I run Windows VM for office and testing stuff.

Servers I run Debian, I do not want flashy I just want stable and tested security fixes.

I could not hack being that far behind for my desktop OS however (which I run on three different devices), so I run Ubuntu, which I remove as much Ubuntu and Gnome baggage as possible such as snaps and by running Sway.

I should really swap to a different distro that also has Debian as its root but without the stuff I don’t want and Sway by default. However I also want stuff to be simple and up to date, as I make my money on my desktop PCs, I cannot afford for it to be a PITA every time I try to install patches.

I do have one PC running arch, but its mostly for the memes (and for PIKVM)

I did used to be Red Hat through and through. I started with Linux back in 98 using Red Hat CD ROMs, but I left for Debian over some previous controversy that I do not remember now, years before the Centos stuff.

Ha, love the audio tell of the resource stealing

One of my favourite wars was to open audio files on other people’s SPARCs, somebody had the loudest bag pipe music that usually ended things.

Access to the SPARCs was normally restricted to third year but if you knew the right person you could get an account created pretty easily. Had the fastest access to the internet at the time within the uni as well.

Thats more down to the case and plate than the PCB, you either need a case that supports multiple mounting types like carpool (https://github.com/dingusxmcgee/Carpool) or completely separate cases. For carpool you use the same PCB for all mount types and just change the plate.

There are loads available that are open sourced, for example: https://github.com/help-14/mechanical-keyboard

Some even have the full guide for ordering: https://github.com/bluepylons/Boston/tree/main/Boston - Current design/3D printed version

Is there not one there that you like? Seems to cover most of the full sized layouts I’ve seen.

Price is heavily dependent on how many PCBs of the same type you want printed and if you need assembly or are planning on it doing it yourself and will be sourcing the components from the cheapest possible suppliers.

Shipping from the Asian shops also has to be factored in, any sort of rush printing or shipping gets very expensive.

Ive paid £40 each for a run of three 40% PCBs fully assembled/tested and with priority shipping that was less than a week. This isn’t actually that bad when you compare to a similar sized PCB from a store in the US for me in the UK when adding on the shipping and potential customs fees.

Cheapest possible will be the free PCB option from PCBWay, but you will need to do some work to get that money back from them https://www.pcbway.com/free_pcb.aspx

Mesektet, oceanographer, and c0v3r cover the past month.

Yes, I was aware, just hijacking the top comment as not everybody would have been aware it was actually fucking possible in the past

It used to be able to do it via an experimental feature, then they took that feature away. https://www.dignited.com/114084/how-to-relocate-the-chrome-address-bar-on-your-android-device/

It smacks of some VP of product development hating on the concept, despite it being optional, and wont back down over the decision. Most likely they used the navigation buttons on the bottom and this caused their great big sausage fingers a problem.

Proper 3u spaces with the proper 3u spacing for the stabs and proper 3u wires, for ALL of my boards. If you doing it properly its just as good as any of the other common sizes of space bars.

I probably have about 20 boards now that are 2x3u, its by far my preference for bottom row as I personally do not like a huge number of keys on the bottom row, its a complete waste for my workflow.

Most modern GMK Cherry and SA do not have the issue with availability and they ALL are the correct spacing. It has improved massively from when I first started getting boards with 2x3u, now you get 2x3u, its extremely rare to get 1x3u in modern GMK or SP kitting, Sure you usually have to buy the space bar kit so its not cheap, but then I have to buy the 40s kit most of the time anyway so…

If you expecting to pick up cheap sets from aliexpress or the like and have amazing 40s support complete with plenty of split space support, then its possible but highly unlikely. I have long moved passed the point I can be bothered with sets like that, I do not want to waste money on stuff I am bodging to fit as I just wont enjoy using it.

If the caps don’t have good 40s support (which is usually limited to a few designers who hate 40s) then it likely wont have 3u bars, so they aren’t getting my money anyway. I do have 40s with full sized mods and full size space bars so the option is there if I ever really want a set with shitty 40s support, but I rarely use those keyboards.

Another fan of pikvm, love mine. I have it plugged into a HDMI switcher so I can control four boxes from one pikvm. It does use some pins so if you wanted to control the power switches you have to do some extra work.

Worth considering if you want to get a UPS at the same time for the NAS, pikvm and any networking you have. Will all last longer with one to avoid random power cuts or surges.

If you need to access it remotely I would strongly suggest getting wireguard or some other reliable VPN setup rather than exposing the web interface to pikvm directly to the internet.

Yeah they just too expensive for 40s and not amazing kitting, no 2x3u space bars means no buy from me as most of my boards are 2x3u.

They either need to start adding basic 40s support to base kits as with GMK Cherry (it’s three keys) or go like SA and split the alphas and mods so you are only buying the mods you actually need.

Paying way more (it’s like £70 for the 40s kit, with fuck all space bars in it, on top of the mods for full size you’ll never use it just bad value.

Sure, SP SA is still expensive but at least you’re only buy what you need.

I did not know that about Zoom, but would make sense given how stubborn the Gnome lot are that such a terrible bodge is required rather than them working with others.

The one that got me with them was when they banned third party screenshot tools from using the default screenshotting hooks. They cited security concerns, which is valid as it stops malware from hijacking this, however rather than adding the ability to add to a user controlled allow list (or any other potential workaround) they just rejected working with anybody on fixing this issue. Instead it came off as a transparent attempt to push their own screenshotting tool.

I did an in place upgrade to testing about a month ago on my PIs after running Bookworm on x86 VMs since it came out. Worked fine for me but my usage is pretty light compared to some as they are headless servers for me and I can rebuild really quickly if I had needed to from backups.

Today I had a shed load of updates per PI, about 160 packages so I guessed it had gone live.

If they would just offer an official replacement service like Apple does for the iPhone then this could be my next phone. Sure its expensive (around £85 for an iPhone 12 Pro), and sure it is often easier to get some random 3rd party shop to replace your battery but I would rather pay more for less risk with the replacement.

The Alexa home app allows you to have groups of groups, so you can divide the room into separate groups, then combine them into one room group. This is what Google should be doing, pretty bad that Amazon of all people does this part of smart home management better when it’s a relatively simple thing to do.

However you should be using automation from timers and sensors to turn lights on and off, the app or voice should only be needed on rare occasions. This is also something Google is shit at, I use home assistant to manage this (I have about 200 smart devices) but there are plenty of other options.