Incidentally the ergo board I have is a Moonlander. I absolutely love it and it helped with my hands being fatigued after typing a lot.

I do have an entirely homebrew alpha layout, but I am also a crazy person.

Oh right, I always forget about those. All I heard about them was positive, so that is a plus.

Since you don’t want anything fancy physical layout wise, I would think going with a big conventional brand might be your best bet for at least USB passthrough.

Personally I tend to lean Logitech amongst those.

Unless you really like the lightshow of RGB lighting or want the super high polling for some reason, you don’t need to go for a gaming series one either, which often have inflated pricing. It might even be easier to find a full size in the office lineup, because excel loves numpad for obvious reasons.

Since I went the totally ergo brained route I can’t recommend any specific model in that area, sorry.

I am sorry this isn’t the enlightening solution, but I am missing some info.

When you say standard ergonomic layout, what are you thinking of? Because that word and the 100% wish make me think of the old wavey looking Microsoft keyboard.

I personally can’t recall seeing USB passthrough on any of the ergonomic boards, and after a bit of looking into the standard I can very well understand why. I have literally never seen audio jack passthrough, not even on standard slab keyboards. So for both these features, why do you want them? If it is because your PC backside is awkward to access, maybe a cable can do the job too?

If you do have a budget besides „it will cost what it costs“, what is it?

As someone that was diehard num pad user and believed it is essential, I am now very happy with a Moonlander and num pad on a layer. Depending on how much you mix numbers and letters, that might not be for you though.

Thank you for the detailed answer. Maybe there is a way to find NX like you said, will certainly let him know.

Are any of those comparable in power to things like AutoCAD?

I mean the bigwigs often have some kind of licensing that needs internet access if some kind anyway. So no internet is often an issue, even with the program on the pc itself.

My father worked in machine development, I believe AutoCAD was actually one of the programs they used. I am sceptical when it comes to browser based versions utilising the full power of the system, interesting development for sure though.

Thank you for taking time to reply anyhow!

I can give you my own reason: I don’t have enough energy left besides work and general life to clean up my mess of hoarded data and make the switch. I am reasonably sure that all my hardware would work, about all games I play should work (nothing with crazy anticheats, next to all steam) too. I have two Linux nerds I could contact if needed and I have some prior experience, even though it is about half a life ago.

Edit: Oh and having something that does what I want and not some guessed approximation at home would make me even more intolerant of the shitshow we have at work.

Do you work with CAD programs and if so, do you know a full feature alternative? I grew up with Linux because my father had unix at work before CAD program makers moved to windows and nowadays he has windows because that is where his CAD programs work. He is in retirement already, but very much a creature of habit. So while he has time to learn something new, radically different controls or such wouldn’t work out.

My bank does not have physical representation anywhere, since it is a digital bank. When I joined them they had a sheet of TAN numbers for us to use, but that is long since gone. And seeing how few and far between other banks are with theirs nowadays it would become extremely impractical to do physical banking only.

Over here, banks aren’t allowed to do SMS codes anymore period. So tell me how I should solve the second factor required by law when all „dumb tech“ alternatives aren’t available anymore due to laws and regulations?

Personally I do reposition throughout the day, but that is personal preference.

It is more and issue on how you do the connections between parts so everything can speak with everything else.

My commercial split has a master half that I could use standalone, the other half needs that master to function though. I imagine that also applies on a scale and then you run into problems on how to do the matrix without compromising nkey-rollover.

That’s part of what I meant with less proprietary requirements. I can’t speak from a current point of view, I just know I loved mine back in the day but it was also a pain to set up because it wasn’t company issued and thus not connected to a big server that handles some things. Not sure if they still need that, back then they did.

Have you ever had a split keyboard before? I use a readily available one and the split does take getting used too.

Why do you want the pads? I work with layers for things like numpad and other specific keys and that works fine. I do come from full sized ISO, so I get why numpad is attractive, it does kinda negate part of the benefits of the split though.

So you want a modern Blackberry? With less proprietary requirements attached?

Currently there are three things that stop me from going Linux and two of those are purely software related (the third is that I don’t want to hate my work software anymore than I currently do). Is it vital software in the sense of it allowing me to work or bring me income? No. Is it something I wish to just use without fiddling after every update because I use them for fun? Absolutely yes.

I am a 90s child, so I don’t completely fit your timespan, but I remember the first PC with SuSe Linux that I built with my father from old server hardware he got from his job.

Back then his job used unix and it was pretty common in his field of work. So Linux was the natural choice for a home pc. SuSe was popular back then, I think mainly because it came on CDs and had books available.

One of the main things I remember is the hassle with network drivers, having to download them on a working pc first.

When I started my apprenticeship as assistant tax adviser in 2016, I used the fax regularly to send stuff to the IRS equivalent. I was also in charge of printing certain thing because the setup for those to come out right was unholy. In the company I am in now, we are pushing for digital solutions but still have a lot of clients with a listed fax number. One of our digital partners had fax: we don’t do that here written in their signature.

It is a thing still sadly.