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Cherry Announces Linux keyboard
Errtu76 writes "ZDnet says Cherry has announced a specially designed Linux keyboard that will be available in the UK, Ireland and Germany later this year.
The Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard has the Linux penguin logo, Tux, instead of the Windows start key and features 29 hot keys. The hot keys are configured for the Linux operating system and desktop applications, simplifying actions such as cutting, copying and pasting text, and moving between Web pages.
PCworld has a little more info on the keyboard."
Is there a hotkey for First Post?
[sig]you really dont want the answers, trust me[/sig]
If the wife is "fucking a nerdier guy than you," I'd hope that you'd do more than change the appearance of the windows key...
Is it just me, or are Hot Keys for thinks like Copying and Pasting really over rated, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, etc. (And the Linux Equivilants, i'm a Windows user) are subconcious to me at this point, rather than rooting around for some key at the top of the keyboard.
Why don't they also include PDF/OO.org copies of the Linux User Guide (mentioned on /. recently and found at http://www.iosn.net/training/end-user-manual/) in order to create a real "Linux starter kit"?
Was this the only article without a picture?
t ml
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8233268776.h
Yeeesssss. It's the only damn thing I really want from a keyboard. Oh, and an Undo key. Oh yeah, and a foot pedal controlling the capitalization. And get rid of the Alt key. And the Escape, while your at it.
... get a free OS?
:-)
"In addition, the keyboard comes with a CD including a special edition of SuSE Linux 9.1 from Novell"...
How long till we get special versions of RedHat or SuSE free with our breakfast cerial.....
Don't be surprised if keyboard manufactorers have to pay a small fee per shipped unit with the windows key... ... which means, that buying a keyboard with a windows-key is just another way of supporting MS.
Petty? Yeah. But Microsoft can be real bastards.
why dont you make a keyboard, with like all the normal keys and none of that stupiod windows key crap, let alone 50 other buttons to open my mail client, browser and 48 other apps i dont even use.
I want an old school 101 or 102 keys keyboard
42
You're talking about this one perhaps?
Why not ship the keyboard with software that detects the OS, and configures 'hot' keys based on said OS?
AFA the 'Windows' key, charge a few pennies more and ship w/iconic keys for all 'major' OS-es.
Or ship with spiffy EOTD (emoticon of the day) that the fashionistas can buy and traded (Pokeyboardmon).
Cherry's G80 series of keyboards is considered by many (including me) to provide the best tactile expierience since the old IBM-keyboards with click, but without the weight and noise.
All other cherries I ever tried to type (G81 and G83) gave me the expierience that they wanted to break my fingers...
don't you think perhaps it has more to do with the 100$ price tag?
I mean with most keyboards having pop removeable keys its cheaper to buy a cheap 20$ keyboard and reclick them into the dvorak layout.
Will there be an Any key?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I realize I always plug these when an article on keyboards comes up, but... you can have what you want (subject to you writing a few macros for some keys) with one of these:
Kinesis
Customizable... programmable... pedals... and an exciting chunky shape! I use the pedals for ctrl and programming punctuation, though, not caps.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Read the article carefully. That's a picture of the solar powered widget, not the upcoming widget. But here's hoping they look similar...that thing's cool.
adam b.
Amazingly enough, the windows key works just fine in linux. It's not essential at all that it have a picture of tux on it.
However I don't see why keyboards can't just come with different caps that you press onto the keyboard. Customise those Windows and function keys.
:D
Hell, we could even have funny ones like an "any" key
I hope the hot keys are mapped to usefull functions such as:
tux key + M + S = email Bill Gates hate mail
I hope this keyboard has an internet button like Compaq's keyboards do! Finally the internet could be coming to linux!
There's a registry entry you can alter to disable the key. If you google 'disable windows key' you'll probably find it.
> Does the Windows key really piss you off *that much*?
You're not from around here, are you?
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
The hot keys are configured for the Linux operating system and desktop applications, simplifying actions such as cutting, copying and pasting text, and moving between Web pages.
Seriously, who uses all the special hot keys on recent keyboards? Do they really "simplify actions"? They are usually placed on top of all keys, which means you have to move your hands all the way to the top to, for example, copy or paste text. On the other hand, ctrl and c keys are conveniently placed around the letter keys.
Even my standard 104-key keyboard has keys that I use very rarely. For example: Printscreen/SysRQ is useless (unless you are a kernel hacker and you are using it as kernel magic key). I haven't used Pause/Breakkey since the days of DOS. Same goes for entire numeric keyboard, but I believe it can be useful for people that need to enter a lot of numbers. And I won't even mention Windows/Tux/whatever and menu keys (which I removed with a screwdriver on some of my keyboards anyway).
If you ask me, the perfect Linux keyboard has a bigger, more convenient space bar and enter keys (They are certainly the most used and should be as large as possible. They are ridiculously small on some modern keyboards.). Forget the numeric keyboard and the useless keys I mentioned above. Oh and of course, remove the capslock key and place the control key in the proper place.
Stick to Tux, buy a tuxsticker !
A lot of keyboards just use permanent stickers for special keys. This way they only have to make one keyboard and then they ship it to mulitple countries. Why not just leave the stickers off the extra keys and supply sets for the user to put them on?
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Throw in a keyboard AND an opportunity to demonstrate that consumers will purchase hardware designed for non-Windows systems... I'm there!
Perhaps even twice!
This seems like the classic misunderstanding of your market. My cut-and-dry view.
1. Market: People who abhor the Dell keyboards that have 10 buttons for shopping and other keyboards filled with other useless crap.
2. Product: Keyboard filled with useless crap.
A better idea would be one with some fully customizable hot keys but with an emphasis on monitoring -- maybe a keyboard with some LCDs monitoring temperature, disk usage, etc. so precious screen space isn't used. Now that I would consider buying.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Does this thing has mechanical springs à la IBM Model M?
If not, and if I can't get a Brazilian layout, I have no use for it.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I hate these "Don't be surprised..." posts. Unless you have something to back this up, it's worthless FUD.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Neither the linked article nor the desktoplinux.com article have said whether or not this keyboard will be wireless.
It seems rather useless to me if it has a wire.
The Ctrl key is in the placd God intended. Get the rubber-dome model for work to spare your coworkers the noice, get the buckling spring for home.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Simply the best keyboard ever made. Unfortunately they're becoming hard to find these days.
Perhaps you should purchase a Mac keyboard.
I assume you can afford one, if you can afford a Mac.
At that price, and in such small production numbers, I have a feeling that the workmanship is shoddy
I can't speak to the usefulness of this thing, but I do work for a company that sells Cherry gear (point of sale things like...keyboards) and I have never seen a Cherry product I'd describe as shoddy. They may not make the best keyboards ever (that would be AT&T in the late 80s), but based on their other products I doubt the hardware is crap.
Not trying to pimp Cherry gear or anything...just sayin.
teeker
And for that matter, get rid of Caps Lock too. Those keys have really overstayed their welcome. And use some of those 29 extra keys as modifiers. It's time the impoverished Linux users discovered the joys of "Hyper" and "Super."
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
I don't understand why people complain about this. Using CTRL in the lower left corner is perfectly comfortable to me, and it's painful for me to use a Sun keyboard where CTRL is in the caps lock position.
What gives, do I have a weird bone structure in my hand or something?
a rotary pot (sliders haven't been used on real hardware for 20 years!)
what?!
what?!
what?!
So I've got mod points, and was looking for the person that says "Why the f**k would you want a special Linux keyboard?" I was going to mod up your post, but then felt I had to respond.
.... It was a horrible idea when Macintosh did it....
putting proprietary crap in a universal Human-Computer interface
I completely disagree here -- it was a GREAT idea when the Mac did it. The command key is one of the things that made the Mac so usable. The Mac was a completely new paradigm in the Human-Computer interface, and a new key gave outstanding access to it. The other keys already had other uses. Control-C is interrupt. Control-S is stop. Control-Q is resume. Other windowing systems also added keys (like the X meta key).
Control-C did NOT universally mean copy when the Mac was made. In early versions of Win, cut and paste were something like ctrl-shift-delete and ctrl-shift-insert. Eventually Win evolved to use the exact same key combinations as the Mac (ZXCV), but substituting the Control key in place of the Command key.
The problem was that MS added the Windows key long after people were using the Control key for that sort of thing. By then nobody cared about the Win key, and it was too late for it to be useful.
You could argue that NOW Apple should go back and take off the Command key since lots of people are using the Control key, but I'd disagree. I like the fact that in my terminal windows Command-C is copy, and Control-C is interrupt.
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
- Let TAB be tabular space and make a new "Next field" key.
- Let ENTER be line break and make a new "Expand selection widget"
- Make an "OK" key to accelerate form/dialog-box submission and a "Cancel" one too
- Make some "Zoom in"/"Zoom out"/"Scroll"/"Pan"/"Bank"/"Tilt"/etc and free the cursor-keys/PgUp/PgDn
- ...
- Write a CUA-addendum with specifics and examples
I don't need a key to open my email client. It opens when I log on.:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Why LCD? Just give the buyer a bag of 10 keys with instructions on how to pop in the chosen keys.
The 5 pairs of keys would be:
Linux
BSD
Windows
Apple
Cherries
Get a free ipod.
My IBM 42H1292 keyboard is the only one I will use. My noisy clacking will destroy your puny membrane switches!
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...as a condom machine in the vatican.
Seriously, you can take any keyboard that has extra keys and map them to whatever you want, whatever kind of symbol is on the keys. I happily use the 'windows key' as an extra meta key for emacs...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I mean with most keyboards having pop removeable keys its cheaper to buy a cheap 20$ keyboard and reclick them into the dvorak layout.
No, no, no. You leave the keys where they are, and draw the dvorak letters on the downhill side of the key with a pencil. You're going to be touch typing anyway, right?
That way you can let QWERTY hunt-n-peckers use your keyboard too.
I knew a guy in college who was geeky enough to type Dvorak & run linux, but not geeky enough to figure out how to make all his X windows use the Dvorak layout. He had to switch them individually somehow. But he wouldn't always do it. And focus-follows-mouse was on, so depending on where the mouse was, the keyboard would switch from Dvorak to QWERTY.
So he could (and would) type ~120 wpm Dvorak & ~100 wpm QWERTY. It totally boggles the mind to imagine how much of his motor cortex was devoted to typing. He probably dreamt about typing.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
This is a Bad Idea(tm). The notion that keyboards must be OS specific is silly when you think about it. Sure, Redmond and Cupertino promote it, but that doesn't mean it's right.
Platform specific keyboards (Solaris, Mac) might make some sense, but multiple PC-x86 keyboards is loopy. Do I need two keyboards if I dual-boot? Three if I triple-boot? Will there be different Wyse terminals depending on which system you wish to connect to?
Just dump the OS logo and replace it with a generic menu key.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's all cosmetic anyway. I suspect (looks like) all that they've done is change a couple of the screen printed images on the keys and/or body.
If any of you complaining about key placement really want those suggested keys, then just read the man page for xmodmap. And that's just one way to do it. Go ahead knock yourself out, make the keys do whatever you want.
Now, give me a Data General Dasher keyboard. The cursor keys even made sense. Add to that the L1-L10 keys of the Sun and you can have the extra functions, including cut and paste in a convenient spot.
By the way Ctl-C and Ctl-V have meanings that precede cut and past and are still used in real OSs. Remember ctl-c is interrupt for running processes. Yes, this is linux and you can use stty to remap, but standardization has its place.
Besides control characters are just that characters, with a place in the ASCII (and other) code. Aren't Cut and Paste application functions?
True friends are hard to come by... I need more money. - Calvin
You end up relying on those hot keys and when you inevitably have to do something without using your non-standard wiz bang keyboard you end up slowing down and looking incompetent.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer