What's your favourite keyboard?

eternal_noob

eternal_noob

Looking for a new mechanical keyboard which i would use mainly for programming.

Should be quiet.
No wireless but USB. No fancy stuff like lighting effects.

I thought of buying a Cherry MX. What's the best switch color for this purpose? (Red, Brown, Blue, Black, any other?)

Any recommendations?
 
The best switch color depends on your personal taste. Some people do prefer a clicky sound where you've got to apply a certain amount of pressure, before the key is being triggered. Others do prefer keys where the signal is triggered at the slightest touch.

Many programmers tend to flock around the clicky blue switches. Well anyway, here's the explanation of switches and differences. And even if something is clicky, there are also dampening rubbers around for key caps.

CHERRY MX SWITCHES AT A GLANCE - Cherry

"Switches",{{doublequote}}keys",{{doublequote}}mechanical" – anyone who has been recently looking for a new keyboard is likely to have encountered at least one of these three terms. Behind these words hide a unique key technology for PC keyboards, which allows a more reliable, precise, and...
www.cherrymx.de www.cherrymx.de

Since your main use case is programming, you don't need any fancy stuff with RGB lightning and so on. So you should mainly ask yourself if you want to have backlit keys or not.

Avoid the "Das Keyboard" brand, overrated, overpriced and it sucks. Why it sucks? On my "Das Keyboard" even when my computer was powered off always a few keys were still lit, and the manufacturer had no solution for this aside many customers faced it. So I always had to pull the keyboard out to have it go dark entirely. On top of that I never had a mechanical keyboard before where the space bar became so wobbly so fast and several keys started to become too sensitive. Also avoid all specifically targeted at gaming, because quite often these do lack the numeric section on the keyboard completely, just like what jmos recommended. This can really be annoying when entering lots of numbers.

So, if you are feeling nostalgic maybe the Unicomp Classic Buckling Spring line is for you. This is basically the IBM Model M with USB port, still manufactured. Of course - it's clicky. Then again it's as close to the original Model M as it gets today.

Aside that maybe the Cherry MS 2.0S keyboard is worth looking at; it's RGB lit, but you can make this just one color or disable at will. It has an optional palm rest available.

Another popular brand right now is Ducky, maybe the "Ducky Origin Vintage" fits your needs. This again exudes these old IBM vibes. If not that model, maybe another one of their models does appeal to you.
 
i have ducky mini one 2 - 60% keyboard

with cherry mx blue switches,
blue switches are very noisy but wonderful to type on best keyboard i have ever owned

and it works perfectly with freebsd, i even managed to get the volume keys working

dont get blue switches if the noise bothers you
i tried all the mx keys in a shop and the blue are by far the best to type on in my opinion

just thought id share my config to get the volume keys working on the ducky mini one 2

/etc/sysctl.conf

Code: 
# usb keyboard media keys
hw.usb.usbhid.enable=1

/usr/local/etc/usbhidaction.conf

Code: 
# ducky one 2 mini
Consumer:Volume_Increment    1 0 mixer vol +2
Consumer:Volume_Decrement    1 0 mixer vol -2
Consumer:Mute            1 0 mixer vol 0

wayfire

~/.config/wayfire.ini

Code: 
[command]
binding_mute = KEY_MUTE
command_mute = mixer vol.mute="^"
repeatable_binding_volume_up = KEY_VOLUMEUP
command_volume_up = mixer vol="+.02"
repeatable_binding_volume_down = KEY_VOLUMEDOWN
command_volume_down = mixer vol="-.02"
 
Keychron K2 V2 with brown switches.

Works plug and play on FreeBSD (Win/Android mode), only use USB cable. Nice small but not tiny form factor, aluminium frame, washable sturdy key caps. Options on white or grey main keys (I choose the white ones for contrast).

Light effects come with most of those mechanical keyboards, but you can set it to a quiet permanent white lights only (good with dim ambient light) or lights off at a keystroke.

The brown switches are a balance between direct input and some mechanical feeling and sound. There are some more silent switches on this keyboard, and some ancient 'teletypewriter' sounding. The shop let me test and choose my option. I'm not a gamer or programmer, just type text.

Only thing I wanted is a large two-row enter key, but that is quite rare on most keyboards nowadays. I got used to a single row enter key very fast.
 
Quiet, not quiet, over the years I've come to realize spacing and feel override noise.
Most laptops are too "squished" for me, basically they feel about two-thirds size/spacing.
Feel, old fashioned mechanical keys provide better feedback than membranes or "virtual" keyboards.

But just my opinions, you do you.
 
Corsair k68 Cherry MX reds is nice. You can turn the backlighting off. It's full size and has a wrist wrest. It's a relatively quiet key board. I have a red dragon 60% with browns I actually like a bit more. My favorite is one I got on eBay it's a domed cherry MX mount hybrid from the 90s. I also have a Corsair domed k55 but they're a bit stiff really.
 
Whatever it is doesn't matter...in a shared space, plug your keyboard into the front of the machine.
Hardware keyloggers are almost undetectable.

I have a monoprice brown, it isn't really that quiet, but it's not irritating.
 
Forgot to mention in my previous post.
If you use the keyboard at one place only, you should better choosing heavier one. Usually, heavier keyboards are physically stabler and the feeling would be almost the same as the designer of the key switch intended.
 
I use these keyboards (post 42):
forums.freebsd.org

Keyboard Odyssey - The Impossible Search for Perfection

Yeah, I can't do that. I have strong muscle memory. If I were to get used to an ergonomic keyboard like that on my desktop then I could not work on my laptop without strong disuption. Same here. As I sit here typing this, it's the difference between "elbows in" and "elbows out". My natural...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

I especially like the first one (Leopold)
 
Brown switches should be quiet enough. They're not silent, but they are far quieter than blue switches. Browns are nice compromise. That keyboard doesn't seem to be hotswap unless I missed something. I prefer hotswap these days, as every once in awhile, I want to try a different switch.
 
I've got a TKL Filco Majestouch 2 with Cherry MX blues as a backup to my Apple Magic Keyboard. The MX blues are like music to my ears while typing. The casing has a nice solid feel to it also.
 
When I got my first job out of college at HP-UX in Cupertino, CA many years ago, a bunch of folks there used the Goldtouch SKR-4200U keyboard. I have been using this keyboard my entire career and have stock-piled a few replacements just in-case. It's common for the holding latch to fail. I like these keyboards enough that I have 3d printed the parts to perform the repair. It's not perfect, I still place a little eraser under the keyboard to keep it proped up at just the perfect height.

It's ergonomic and I like how the keys feel. I also like that it doesn't have a num-pad since I hardly use it and prefer to have the mouse placed closer to the keyboard.

Goldtouch now makes a V2 version of the keyboard that I don't like.
 
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