Comment by LyndsySimon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LyndsySimon | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> My $60 GMMK, with 20 minutes of easy modifications, a $30 set of keycaps, and a $90 set of healios switches was the smoothest linear keyboard I've ever used.

Wow. Thank you.

I flirted with the "mech" community for a while a couple of years ago, and ended up with two boards:

A KBParadise V60 with Gateron Browns that I use as my primary keyboard for my desktop. That's mostly a gaming machine for me, but I do code on it quite a bit.

A bluetooth keyboard with low-profile Gateron Blues that I used with my iPad 6th Gen for coding (I use Blink to SSH/MOSH into a VM). That was a good keyboard but the feet broke off, then I upgraded to an iPad Pro and the Apple keyboard cover. It was collecting dust, so I gave it to my 11-year-old.

The GMMK looks like exactly what I was really looking for, for desktop use. I've got some research to do :)

By way of warning, GMMK uses a proprietary keyboard layout editor that only works on Windows (I tried running it in WINE and got nowhere). If editing your keyboard layout in firmware is important to you, I would recommend the Massdrop CTRL (TKL size) or ALT (67-key), which are similar keyboards with hot-swappable switches that run QMK firmware. (In addition to changing the backlighting colors and basic remappings like capslock to escape, QMK lets you do interesting things like add layers, or have a key behave one way when tapped and another way when held down and used as a modifier.) But if you can take care of all your layout needs in software, the GMMK is a great keyboard.

Ah, then I'm glad I didn't order yet!

I run Windows 10 on my desktop at home when it's in "gaming rig" mode, but ArchLinux when I'm hacking on something. I have Manjaro on my personal laptop and macOS on my work laptop. Firmware mapping is definitely a requirement for me.

In fact, my experience is that what firmware a keyboard uses isn't always clear. My KBParadise V60 is almost perfect for me. I'd like a numpad sometimes, but I can always get an external one. The bigger problem is that keymapping can only be done through some DIP switches on the bottom or via flashing the firmware. The firmware isn't open source and is fairly obfuscated from what digging around I've done on it. the arrow keys are mapped to a cross arrangement on the right side of the keyboard, and I'd much prefer to use hjkl. I've not found a reasonable way to do it on that keyboard that doesn't require configuring it on every device I use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com