System76 Launch Keyboard | Hacker News Reader

System76 Launch Keyboard

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89 pointslycopodiopsida109 comments

Man if System76 is listening, or any keyboard manufacturer for that matter: please make a mechanical version of the ms ergonomic keyboard. All the other "ergonomics" seem to be trying too hard and have layouts that are so different from a standard keyboard as to be annoying. The MS one was perfect in every way, just needs mechanical keys.

> ms ergonomic keyboard

Hopefully you mean the Natural Ergonomic KB 4000, because every incarnation since has borked the key layouts in some significant way. I have a collection of those bad-boys, so hopefully I'll never run out, cuz they're getting harder to find.

Definitely the KB 4000. I have a collection as well and still use them on occasion. I even researched and found one guy who converted his to mechanical but the amount of effort and time is well outside of what I could dedicate to a project like that.

Only keyboard I’ve ever bought more than one of.

One of mine lasted so long the little nubs on the J and F keys had worn away. I had to scar them with an old soldering iron to I could position my hands by touch again.

Perhaps MS has some patents/IP protecting their design ? It may be why no one is doing it? .

Even if the patents are questionable , small OEMs would not want to risk facing MS legal.

Logitech makes an ergonomic keyboard, the Logitech K860 ERGO, and smaller OEMs make them, too.

If MSFT released a cherry MX version of this keyboard, and moved the 6 key to the right hand cluster, it'd be an instant buy from me. I learned touch typing with 6 on the right side, and most keyboards I've seen have it setup the same, so not sure why MS sticks with this convention.

Huh. I haven't used an ergo keyboard in many years, and never used one much, but just checked and sure enough, I type the 6 with my left hand, every time.

It's either an innate it's-easier-for-some-reason thing, or else it's habit from stretching across the number keys while playing WASD+mouse video games. I type 7 and up with my right, though.

Interesting, I never played much games but the WASD keys sounds like a really good reason why some may type '6' with the left hand.

Yeah, they're hot-keys for various things in a lot of games. If you've spent much time playing PC FPS games of the old-school type where your dude can carry a whole arsenal at once, for example, then you've had to get very good at quickly and precisely striking the entire number row with your left hand, since they're typically used to swap to a specific weapon, plus sometimes some of the F keys for other reasons (thinking in Jedi Knight, where F-keys are used to trigger force powers or healing in the default layout). Or any of the old-school keyboard + mouse or keyboard + joystick simulator games where almost every button does something, especially if they're combat oriented simulators (since that adds a lot of urgency to needing to hit many buttons very fast) like Mechwarrior or X-Wing/TIE Fighter.

I second this wholeheartedly. There were the Microsoft natural keyboards and the cheap $20 knockoffs that had the six key on the right. I always had to look for those. I thought I was broken but apparently I’m not alone.

Alice style keyboard is as close as you can get in terms of layout

The Kinesis Freestyle is absolutely fantastic.

I came to second this. As a fan of the MS Ergonomic Keyboard for over a decade, I bought the Freestyle Edge with Cherry MX Brown keys and never looked back. I had to do just a bit of customization to get a negative bias to work with the tenting kit (to feel similar to the MS keyboard) but it's been a pure joy to type on.

Totally. AL other ergots going full crazy or barely at all. MS Ergo classic is nearly perfect.

Especially of the lopped the number pad off of it. Been wanting the equivalent to the MS Nat Erg 4000 at an 80% for some time.

I buy computers from System76 and they are good. Highly recommended

But if it's not a wireless ergonomic keyboard, I am not interested

The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless keyboard, despite its flaws, is the healthiest and most comfortable keyboard I've ever used. Started using it four years ago and I'll never go back

Ideal if you edit in Vim: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Wireless-Desktop-...

That thing (the System76 keyboard) is fugly. :-) I did just by a fun clicky, expensive keyboard, and not so expensive mouse for home. I purposely didn't buy wireless as I find no point in wireless when these things are on my desk 100% of the time. I just replaced both an apple wireless keyboard, and wireless magic mouse, with a wired Razor Blackwidow and a wired Logitech G403. Not to mention I'm sure someone can snoop on and log wireless keyboards. But, I'm tired of dealing with charging things, or replacing batteries.

I like my wireless keyboard for some applications. Most of the time my keyboard is on my desk, but at my music workstation I instead of midi controllers in front of me, but sometimes I need to grab a keyboard/mouse for control. Not having to deal with wires there is great.

I like my wireless mouse too: it moves, and my desk is too crowded to find a good spot for the cord to not get in the way. (with working from home I have a bunch of work related test fixtures taking up space.) Those who have a clean desk won't have this problem - but I've never been able to pull that off personally.

> But if it's not a wireless, split, ergonomic keyboard, I am not interested

Not wireless, but I've recnetly gotten a ZSA Moonlander [1] keyboard and I'm in love. It's wonderful. Like the System76 one, it's open source and you store the keyboard config on-device.

[1] https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

Ergodox and the like have one big problem: hard or impossible to use if you need a layout for a language that has more than 26 characters.

I disagree. This keyboard has programmable layers that can be switched between quite easily. For instance, I have a whole layer for greek characters because I use them a lot whilst programming.

Developing muscle memory for the layers takes time, but it's not so bad.

What does this have to do with the fact that I need all of my russian alphabet when I type in russian?

The problem is that the default russian qwerty (or rather йцукен) simply won't fit. You will have to bind additional characters to weird places, which will be messing with your muscle memory or use layers, as you've said. Which is super annoying. Imagine you have to switch to a different layer when you need to type 'z', 'h', 's' and 'p' for example.

The Moonlander has 70 keys on it. If you don't want to split up your alphabet, just assign your whole alphabet to the first layer and move things like punctuation or numbers to the next layer There's plenty of room on this keyboard for bigger alphabets.

Again - the issue is that this breaks default layout. Obviously any keyboard with at least 33 keys will be enough for me to just place the alphabet on them. The problems is that this breaks everything.

Anyhow - after a bunch of keyboards all I can say is that 60-65% ones are the best. I get everything I need - not more, no less.

I took the plunge a few months ago on the Moonlander hoping to alleviate wrist pain and have not regretted it one bit.

I wonder what are the thumb keys mapped to? Or what did you choose to map them to?

The base layer of my left thumb cluster has Space, Ctrl, Alt and a key for switching layers. My right thumb cluster's base layer has Enter, Tab, Backspace and Esc.

Left is space, backspace, command, and a macro for Raycast. Right is escape, enter, tab, and layer switch key for media controls.

Moving some of the keys around, like the parenthesis and such makes me shy away from most keyboard of this ilk. I do like the idea of additional thumb keys though. My ideal is an 80% keyboard with additional thumbs so I'm quite tempted by the X-Bows Knight[1].

[1] https://x-bows.com/products/x-bows-knight-ergonomic-mechanic...

If an 80% split or unified keyboard with additional thumbs is all you're after, the Dygma Raise might be just what you're after: https://dygma.com

That does look interesting, although it is a 60% keyboard (no arrows, pg up/down, delete or function keys).

Happy System76 Laptop user here, too! However nothing goes over the programmable, ergonomic split keyboard „Kinesis Advantage 2LF“ ;-)

https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/

ergodox and moonlander come immediately to mind as things i'd use over an advantage2, for native QMK support if nothing else.

In the world of mechanical keyboards I'd consider a kinesis to be mid range. Definitely a great keyboard, not terribly different from a Maltron or other ergo boards.

As a happy user of a Moonlander, I think the Kinesis has some nice advantages, namely the fact that the keys on each split are in a recessed well. I think that might have some ergonomic advantages, but I haven't tried one yet so I'm not sure.

I am a new Moonlander user (for ~4 months now) who switched from a Kinesis1/2 after over 10 years of use. The well feels nice for e.g. the "d" column to be deeper than "f", so your longer index finger rests a little more naturally. I don't think it's a significant world-changing advantage, just one of those nice minor design touches.

Honestly the bigger problem was that after 10 years of use, your hand position with any keyboard will cause you to hold it poorly at first with a new one, if the layout is massively different. The first 48 hours with the Moonlander were rough until I found the proper spacing and setup for them...

Yeah, coming from a traditional non-ergonomic keyboard, it took me a couple of weeks before I could type as fast on my Moonlander as I could on my previous keyboard.

In particular, the keyboard being ortholinear took a lot of getting used to, but I am glad I invested time in making the switch.

> Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless keyboard

Have you tried the Surface Ergonomic KB?

All the goodness of the sculpt (even better IMHO) with a full layout.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-ergonomic-keyboard...

I don't think the Surface Ergonomic KB comes with an elevated palm rest (which I like in the Sculpt).

I use the Sculpt on my lap, never on a desk

The Surface Ergo is too wide. The Sculpt is more symmetrical and narrow, by omitting the number pad, etc., on the right-hand side

I like my sculpt I have at work. The casing is starting to crack after a year for some reason, but everything is functioning fine.

I love the MS Nat Ergo 4000 and thought the Sculpt would be a good successor, but find I really dislike it. I find the short key travel hard to adjust to (lots of typos), and the mushy ESC key was not conducive to Vim editing. (P.S. I've a 10 finger touch typist. Learned in school in the '80s on manual typewriters.)

Funny how our experiences are so disparate.

The tiny escape key is a defect of the Sculpt keyboard

But I have caps lock mapped to ctrl (I hit it with my pinkie) and the windows key mapped to escape (I hit it with my thumb)

Almost all hardcore Vim users map ctrl and escape. It's standard practice

Also, I use the Sculpt on my lap, never on a desk

The MS Nat Ergo 4000 is too wide and asymmetrical for my lap. Same is true of the MS Surface Ergo. The Sculpt is more symmetrical and narrow, by omitting the number pad, etc., on the right-hand side

$285.00? Too expensive. It's not even a matter of whether I can afford something of this sort. I simply feel awful when I overpay for something that seems like a hipster product.

Cut out the USB hub and seemingly useless RGB LEDs, bring down the price a bit and maybe I'll bite.

I do appreciate features like N-key rollower and programmable firmware, as well as being assembled in US. Ambivalent about aluminum chassis. (I.e don't mind it, but wouldn't mind good plastic either.)

Smallish non Chinese or Taiwanese company producing a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, QMK firmware, LED's and you are most times at a price around this.

And for people which like a clean setup the building hub is grate.

Just kinda pointless in case you have a laptop and a usb dock.

EDIT: Also just guessing but no LED and no HUB would probably reduce the price by at most 50$. Most cost don't come from parts but producing in small amounts, development etc.

Not sure about that. I’ve got a Durgod K320 TKL cherry MX red silent switches and bought mac keytops for it and it’s half that price in the US.

Also doesn’t have some fucked up weird keyboard layout that makes it impossible to use another keyboard for 3 months if you have to change.

I believe that's not "non chinese/taiwanese"?

Sorry missed that. Had a long day :)

The LEDs are less than a buck each in any form of quantity. A USB hub chip is cheap too, but I don't know what the right search term is. If it lowered the price by $50, it is only if you have a time machine and the ability to get them to not design it with that in the first place. (high speed USB does have some interesting requirements on board layouts - but I'm not enough off an engineer to know how bad those are in practice) In reality doing a new layout so there is no hub will cost more than just selling these and letting people configure the LEDs off.

>Smallish non Chinese or Taiwanese company producing a mechanical keyboard with replaceable keys, QMK firmware, LED's and you are most times at a price around this.

Like I said, LEDs seem pointless in this design.

Also, I don't know of many US-based keyboard manufacturers, but I know of these guys:

https://www.pckeyboard.com/

Their 10-keyless version inspired by Model M is $120 dollars. Yes, it's pretty barebone, but that's exactly my point.

Edit: https://www.wasdkeyboards.com

Assembled in US, $170.

The LEDs cost nothing. I'm pretty sure they didn't design the PCB from scratch, it's just a thing included in essentially every OEMable design. Redragon, who sell keyboards from 20 dollars up ships RGB everywhere.

I bought an Akko 3108v2, best mech keyboard I have ever owned, for $95 new.

no LEDs, no hub, true. don't want LEDs in a keyboard (I am not this desperate to see colored lighting while staring at a color monitor) and I use a wireless mouse; no hub needed.

$285 is insane.

People will pay $50+ for a single keycap, just to put the keyboard market into perspective. You may think this is too expensive, but for many people that's totally within an acceptable price range for a carefully-designed keyboard that matches what they're looking for.

It’s amazing how much more expensive mechanical keyboards are now than when I bought my first one. There are $50 ones from China that break after 6 months, but most set you back $100-200 now. The prices doubled from years ago for the same tech

https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-c1-wired-mechanic...

Impressive prices

Not sure where the idea comes from that the Chinese keyboards break after 6 months - I have a royal kludge and tecware keyboards that were both around $50 and have excellent build quality.

I'm a Kailh Box Jade user, I love them to bits, but I understand that I am extremely niche. It's an interesting choice to sell them in prebuilts to a wide audience.

There's also tons of rattle in both sound tests, possibly stabilizers or the springs. I strongly recommend lubing the springs if you do pick one of these up (4-5 hours of work). Lubing the Jade clickbar also changes the sounds from a "thack" to a "thock," without changing the tactile profile much (unlike regular tactile switches). Something to consider if you find that the Jade pitch is unpleasant.

I like Jade and Navy .. so nice! I'd love to build a keyboard using either of those sometime. But I already have too many keyboards... (not that that's ever stopped me yet haha)

Lubing box switches on the mechanism is not recommended. Just the spring. Box switches are designed to be self-cleaning. If you want a thock in a box switch, get Royals.

If you want that effort of lubing to go up to days, you could use multiple layers of RO-59. That's a bonding lubricant, so the effect will not even close to be as pronounced, but you can't get it off easily.

Not a fan of the shortened right Shift key. I’ve always thought of this as an over optimization to save space.

Second thought - at this price point, I would expect this to be a split keyboard. Will this be in a future iteration?

Yeah for split spacebars on a programmable keyboard!

I currently use and love a Kinesis Freestyle Pro, and would consider this for my next keyboard. My favorite feature of the Kinesis board is that it is programmable and has a split spacebar. The split/ergo shape is okay, but I don't think I will ever get another keyboard that doesn't at least have a split spacebar and a way to program it.

With half of my spacebar acting as fn and then arrows, backspace, delete and escape on the fn layer move my hands around MUCH less than on a normal keyboard.

Is good you can customize, open-source, N-key rollover, and some other things, but it lacks some keys such as a number pad and some others, and doesn't seems to have PS/2 (I don't like USB), so I think that I will keep the keyboard that I currently have. (I also don't need full lighting like that)

Why don’t you like USB ?

USB controllers are usually unable to provide more than 6-key rollover. Some keyboards offer two parallel cables for 12-key RO, but for real NKRO you basically need PS/2.

I wouldn't say "usually" anymore. I was just able to mash 18 keys at once on my non-exotic keyboard and have them independently register. NKRO over USB isn't that rare now.

Maybe that was the case in the past, but I don't think that's true anymore. Using this[0] page, it will register as many keys as I can mash without triggering a global hotkey.

[0]: http://gadzikowski.com/nkeyrollover.html

I googled ps2 vs usb and found this - https://www.how2shout.com/technology/usb-vs-ps2-the-battle-b...

On Qubes OS, USB devices are isolated from the system to prevent BadUSB attacks. This makes using a USB keyboard quite complicated and less secure: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/device-handling-security/#usb-s....

Do you have a mechanical ps2 keyboard you recommend? Also what do you think of USB->PS2 converters?

Kinda curious how this compares to something like the Drop Alt, which seems to have the same feature set for $100 less:

https://drop.com/buy/drop-alt-mechanical-keyboard

For one, with System76 I can at least look at the damn thing without having to create a friggin' account.

Try

https://drop.com/buy/drop-alt-mechanical-keyboard?mode=guest...

It is stupid legacy from before they pivoted, not sure why they still do that.

This website won't even let me look at a high-res photo of the keyboard or see specs without signing up.

What is wrong with these people?

The Alt is essentially dead for this price point, not that is was ever particularly good. The stabilizers in particular is something Drop never got right.

The GMMK Pro is the current disruptive force on the market, alongside boards that are entering semi-permanent stock like the Novelkeys NK65 or the KBDfans KBD67 Lite.

At this price point, and in a few other ways, this board from System76 is a joke. All the modifier keys are non-standard size (more in the pool of exotic), probably avoid putting any stabilizers on the thing. And that weird indent on the Tab key. This smells like designing the keyboard according to Keycap availability. Pretty sure you can find those exact caps on Aliexpress for 40-50 dollars.

The keycap profile is a super weird choice. I love DSA and XDA (this is XDA), but they're not exactly a good experience out of the box for someone who has been working on Cherry or OEM.

If you want a board with this layout, check out the GMMK Pro or ID80. The ID80 in particular requires that you buy parts yourself, but that's worth it just for the keycap availability. Both also support QMK.

> The Alt is essentially dead for this price point, not that is was ever particularly good. The stabilizers in particular is something Drop never got right.

Yeah, I've certainly heard complaints about the stabs (not like you can't address that, but you certainly shouldn't have to).

Maybe I should've rephrased my question as: What differentiates the System76 from its competitors (of which the Alt is an example).

The space of:

1. TKL

2. QMK programmable

3. Aluminum block chassis

4. LED lighting

Is pretty well-occupied and a $300 price point is right up there at the top of the segment. Add in all the downsides you mention and I just can't imagine buying this thing.

If you add in Keycaps and Switches, $300 is pretty average to low end for an alu case board with a PCB that supports VIA/QMK. Most QMK capable boards are custom after all.

BTW, TKL generally refers to boards that have a nav cluster and arrow keys in a layout similar to a full size. The boards discussed here are all 75% or 65% (difference being function row).

Being dabbling in custom keyboards a while now, and these were exactly my thoughts as well.

This looks very nice. Most importantly, the profile isn't too high. I have a Keychron K6 and Vortexgear Pok3r. The Pok3r is about right even though it is a little taller than this keyboard. The K6 is far too tall to be comfortable. I think the price isn't for a programmable keyboard with swappable switches. PBT keycaps are also much better than ABS, another fault of the K6.

These days I'm typing on a Kinesis Advantage2 for ergonomic reasons and I just can't see myself going back to a 60% or 65% keyboard. I hope System76 considers making an ergo with the features of this board in the future.

$285! Wow...

Still cheaper than most Topre boards...

In the mechanical keyboard market, this price is not very special, even for keyboards with much less functionality (e.g. no USB 3.2 hub) and made of plastic.

Heck, there are keycapp sets that sell for $100-$200 alone...

Mmm but then I compare it to this.

https://www.pcgamingrace.com/products/glorious-gmmk-pro-75-b...

> SWITCHES

> Not Included

Not really comparing like for like here, you're comparing a base to build your own keyboard with a full keyboard at the listed price points.

That's just the base plate alone for $100. No keycaps, no usb-c 3.2 hub, no accessories, and so on.

100$ is just the reservation price, which is deducted from the actual price at the time of ordering (which is $169)

If you're using it on a Mac, then it'll save you $40 because it's got 2x USB-A ports! (Apple charge $19 for a USB-C to A).

Some curious logic given you can buy usbc to usba adapters for a dollar

I have an IKBC CD87 with Cherry keyswitches, no numeric pad, at well under half the price. It has been perfect. Metal frame, wired; no hub, no RGB LEDs.

Just today I got my Sabrent HB-B7C3 USB-3 hub with 60W auxiliary wired power and 10 individually-switched ports (7 for data, 3 for charging). I don't need my keyboard to hub for me, nor to soothe me with LED action. Anyway, it hasn't enough ports.

Trying to take advantage of of the wisdom of all of you keyboards nerds out here. Are you aware of any good/wonderful keyboard replacement for a laptop? I am assuming that they are standard for a given laptop size which might be totally wrong. Anyways if any such thing existed, I'd love to upgrade.

Hm, I guess another option.

I'm want to buy a mechanikal keyboard with QMK firmware (one which supports Tab Dance).

I'm just not sure which.

This one doesn't look bad, but then I'm more interested into something with a slightly more ergonomic key arrangement.

I also thought about the Moonlander, but it's even more pricey then this one.

The sad reality currently is that if you want ergonomic design, mechanical switches, and customizable open source firmware, you're going to have to pay for it. The Moonlander is basically mid-tier in terms of price for a ergonomic mechanical keyboard.

For what it's worth I'm very happy with my Moonlander, but I would have had a hard time convincing myself to bite the bullet and pay for the keyboard myself if my employer hadn't offered to cover the bill.

I'm glad I did though, it made a big difference for my achey, unhappy hands.

Durgod k320 is dirt cheap and supports QMK firmware. I haven’t tried the firmware myself as the default is fine. I don’t customise my stuff heavily so I don’t have problems using other peoples computers occasionally.

> I don’t have problems using other peoples computers occasionally.

I know what you mean ;=)

But I really really want tab dance functionality, switched esc-caps and a few other things. And this things being configured in you keyboard instead of the OS make it just a lot less annoying.

No ISO, no money.

This. That tiny little enter key is laughable once you’ve got used to iso layouts.

And I'm the opposite, ISO layouts suck for me.

And thats fine for you! But as a keyboard maker System76 could have make it optional as a lot of other keyboard maker are able to do.

No hardware Dvorak option? For shame.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

In what sense am I "configuring" this when the only thing I can change on it is the switch feel?

It's not about ordering different configurations.

It's about the keyboard being configurable, or as they say: "Remap keys, swap keycaps, and configure multiple layers to your liking. (...) Seamlessly adjust the layout with the Keyboard Configurator application. Because changes are saved to the keyboard’s firmware, you can use your custom layout at any workstation. (...) Included key puller makes it easy to pop and place keys where you want them. Extra keycaps are provided in different sizes, contours, and red and blue accent colors. (...) Use four layers for personalized application shortcuts, adjusting hardware functions, non-QWERTY layouts, and more."

QMK-compatibility means that you can flash the keyboard with your own firmware, written in C. Quite a lot of potential for extension, macros, and odd bits and bobs of USB-compatible things like midi, steno protocols, and mouse movement.

That's just their store template I assume; all of the PCs they sell have a lot more than just one option.

I would pay $500 for this keyboard if I can put it in the dishwasher. Seriously that's my dream keyboard. Mechanical, high quality and washable in the dishwasher or just washable like a dish.

Probably doesn’t quite solve your problem exactly but these days you can get hotswappable keyboards that allow you to take the full switch off without needing to get your soldering iron out. You won’t be able to literally wash it but it should make cleaning a fair bit easier I imagine.

I have one. Not only that, the switches are external to the keyboard so nothing for the debris to fall into. Still.

You know how many keys the keyboard has? Come on man.

I want to put the keyboard in the dishwasher and call it a day. Honestly, I'd like my laptop to be dish washable too but that might be a little too farfetched.

There are dishwashable keyboards, but in combination with mechanical not

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