I went from a full size to a 40% keyboard to an ortholinear and now use a low-profile split keyboard as a daily driver.
IME it's so much better for ergonomics with a proper desk setup and seating/posture with the split halves shoulder width apart. Wireless is a great benefit as well if you swap between desktops and laptops.
Open source firmware like ZMK and QMK make it trivial to use splits with Linux, mac OS and Windows and for any environments where the OS is locked down and software installation is required.
But for me, most mechanical keyboards are downright painful to use. The standard rectangular layout is bad for my wrists, the keypress depth is bad for my fingers, clicks are just plain annoying.
Perhaps decades of keyboard use has worn my wrists and fingers down or helped me define what I wanted, but it's split low-profile or bust.
And there's a dearth of such options on the market. Slowly rising, but a paltry fraction of the overall "mechanical"/custom keyboard market, especially as it comes to keycaps!
Maybe I should just grab the bull by the horns and mod a Microsoft Sculpt to be wired, whose only downside is unreliable wireless.
/rant
I think you're conflating things. The "mechanical" in "mechanical keyboard" refers to the key switches. That's it. Then you have unrelated traits such as customization,which can express in using fancy/functional keycaps, feel/keypress experience, and whatever you can imagine and throw at a keyboard. None of your complains refer to mechanical keyboards in particular.
For a scene that is so into customization, it's disappointing how much it sticks to bad choices.
You need to pay attention to what you're saying, because you're referring to different things with unrelated words. If you look at what you're saying, you're talking about custom keyboards. Not mechanical keyboards. Custom keyboards. You even called it a "scene". You're talking about people who buy gear and assemble/modify it to fit their taste. What choice of switches they use is irrelevant. Heck, are you still talking about mechanics keyboards if someone switches cherry MX switches with Topre ones?
Took me a lot of searches to find something meeting my requirements
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/fan-of-microsofts-windows-pc-a...
Side note, the BFO-9000 looks glorious.
I've also really enjoyed my Keychron Q11. It only has 5 of those keys (I remapped them a bit because I find "end" more useful than "insert"), and have adjusted quite easily. Relative to the default, I've got Home/End where Ins/Del are, Del for PgUp, and PgUp/Dn where it has PgDn/Home. That was all painless to change in the mapping tool. https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q11-qmk-custom-me...
There used to be. I have a Microsoft keyboard[1] that works just fine using a PS2 <-> USB connector. Unfortunately I lost the PS2 <-> USB connector (which, IIRC, was an active converter, not a passive one) so I don't use it any more.
I use a standard mechanical keyboard with the standard US layout, and have not noticed any discomfort after 25 years or daily driving the standard layout.
[1] This particular one - first gen model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#... - although if you browse that entire page you'll see that there are newer models.
That's the usual way people use these smaller keyboards, and it's way superior in my opinion.
My non-QMK keyboard has a horrendous home+end location, which I only realized after I acquired the thing. I did not realize how much I rely on those keys in normal programming.
I have used such keyboards for many years and I have been content with them, even if a couple of years ago I have switched to a more compact completely split keyboard, without a separate digit pad (for 2 reasons, a closer position of the pointing device and easier transport in my luggage, due to its smaller total size, to be able to also use it instead of the non-ergonomic laptop keyboard).
You can achieve the same effect in a more convenient way by buying any of the many keyboards with separate parts for the hands, together with a separate numeric pad, which contains the third part of a classic 104/105-key keyboard.
The only remaining difference from the classic format is that on such keyboards the home-end and PgUp-PgDn key pairs are typically on the same vertical column at the right edge of the keyboard, instead of being side-by-side, but it is easy to become accustomed to this arrangement, which actually makes them easier to reach.
https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q14-max-alice-lay...