As someone who's looking to to get into the hobby, I'm curious to hear if there are any recommendations for budget friendly mechanical keyboards. I had/have a Corsair cherry red mechanical keyboard that I used probably around 10 years ago at this point when I was into gaming, but now I'd be looking for something a bit more refined, and possibly vintage as I quite enjoy using old tech. Any suggestions? I'm in Europe if that matters at all.

Hi! New to all of this, but I've been following the community for a while and wanted to finally get my hands on a board after having figured out what (I think) I like. Still have some questions concerning multiple-language use case. I read through some of the posts on here but couldn't find a lot so I thought I will just ask...

So far, following one comment, I guess it would be best to go with anANSI layout and learn how to use US International layout, since the (Keychron) Keyboard I currently eyeball is also difficult to get as ISO fully assembled in the color option I want, ordering from Europe. I need this to run on Linux and I guess there's no way around getting into key mapping.

1. I do work with several langues, so I would need at minimum Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, additionally some characters of Nordic, Slavic, Germanic and Romanic languages, so basically a lot of diacritics, but also a few extra characters such as ø, ß, ł. However, from what I read US International might not work with for instance Czech, which is a huge problem for me (š, č, ž, ů etc.). Anyone on here with experience and/or solutions regarding this?

2. For those of you owning and using a Keychron on Linux, is keymapping a no-brainer? (I hope my biggest issue with this will just be using a Chromium-based Browser xD) --> If Keychron isn't advised, any ideas on other Keyboards supporting key mapping, preferably manufactured in and shipped from Europe. (metal body, 80%, wired, media knob, possibly macros, price point less important)

3. Also looking for recommendations on where to buy aesthetically pleasing Latin/Cyrillic Keycaps! Preferably Europe-based Vendors and no sketchy and cheap (possibly toxic) chinese products.

Thanks a lot!

My Keychron Q11 showed up recently and I've been super happy with it. Main reason was that my Noppoo Choc Mini finally lost a switch and I don't have any on hand (nor a soldering iron ...yet) but it turns out I actually really wanted the pair of rotary encoders on this and didn't even realise.

Specifically, I've got it bound to Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown so I can scroll through my tabs with it and close them with a click binding to Ctrl-W and that's working out really well.

Anyone else use the knobs like that? I've got the other one set to volume and the vendor had zoom as a suggestion but I wonder what else people do with these?

Bonus newb Q: On the product page they demonstrate binding Ctrl-+ zooming to the encoder via a macro but neither macro13 nor the {KC_LCTL,KC-W} type syntax would let me click "Confirm" when trying to associate it to the knob in Via (eg. it wouldn't let me follow their example). Luckily it was happy with the alternative of LCTL(KC_W) that I stumbled on somewhere but now I wonder how to properly associate a macro to a knob?

I picked up a Ducky One Mini at a flea market yesterday, and after cleaning it extensively it seems to be working pretty well for the most part. I'm using it for writing and coding, so not having dedicated arrow keys will take some getting used to, but other than that it seems neat enough for the price I paid.

However, the alternative graphic button (on the right side of the space bar) is completely unresponsive. Pressing it just makes no difference at all. I used a tool that maps keyboard presses in Linux (xev), and it showed nothing when Alt Gr was pressed (just like the Fn button), so it seems no signal is being sent from the keyboard to the computer.

It could be that this is due to some setting made by the previous owner, or maybe there's something else going on. Maybe I need to update the firmware. Maybe it's broken. I have no idea.

The back-light behind some of the numerical keys is also disabled or broken, but it doesn't bother me much as I'm not a big fan of back-light anyway.

But if anyone has any suggestions what to try for the alternative graphic key it would be much appreciated! For now I have re-routed right super (Windows button) to be read as Alt Gr, but it's not very convenient when writing Latex and using a lot of curly brackets. :)