I always find myself most comfortable using Linux for daily driver. Regardless of the privacy-invasiveness of alternative systems, I am so used to easy package installation from curated sources, the ability to automate almost anything and simply dependability that Linux (and the UN*X family) offers.
One important aspect of my productivity is my custom keyboard layout which is based off programmer’s dvorak. I moved Ctrl and Alt keys so they’re easy to reach as I use them extensively. Super and Menu keys on the other hand is barely used and must now sit in the corners.
My keyboard layout
As you can see, I introduced two “Mod” keys, placed at the convenient places of CapsLock and Enter. The Mod keys are like Shifts: combine them with a major key and you have something else. For instance, Mod + C/T/H/N becomes Up/Down/Left/Right and Mod + Y/D/U/R turns into Page Up/Page Down/Home/End. No more moving the whole hand back and forth just to touch these arrow bastards!
I used
xmodmap
at the beginning, then migrated to xkbmap (via xkbcomp) and ended up
writing my own program on top of Interception
Tools. I’ll talk about
it in this series, but the next one will be about my window manager.