For medium to advanced users, I believe the best experience is derived from installing a distro that gives you just a tty and building up from there. Debian's packages are too old. Arch's too new lol, I don't wanna have to think about my updates at all. Void is the perfect middle ground between those, installs similar to Debian, and even boots faster than both :)
(Gentoo is a no no)
I feel like most EDC stuff is underwhelming, but I still enjoy it tho
It's funny to me how everybody on the 40% ergo (maybe split) train wants/likes exactly the corne, but with more pinky stagger
I'd love to help you iterate a layout based on your B point. I made one based on those ideas with Keyboard Designer and definitely noticed improvements over the original MessageEase layout, but I'd like to get your input too.
That's the layout I made. I took Dvorak as a starting point, then applied your ideas where I saw fit, and later swaped a few keys around.
Holding # opens the keyboard settings btw. I find it a lot better to have larger backspace, symbols and enter keys than having a dedicated settings key (that I accidently press way too often in Thumb-Key)
Bear in mind Keyboard Designer doesn't allow actions on diagonal slides, so that's why you might notice them missing
As a 40% keyboard user, I find amusing that a full size keyboard in disguise gets called "portable"
Nice keeb tho :)
I found this keymap's symbol layer to be the perfect middleground between similarity to a standard keyboard and plain better symbol placement. The right side makes more sense the more you look at it (and simulate typing on it)
Void Linux is home. Plus, as soon as word got out that Windows 11 had those insane system requirements and the TPM stuff I decided I would abandon Winblows for good once 10 reaches end of life.