General: Keyboard

Hardware

For me it takes some time to adapt to a keyboard. Especially the switch between soft laptop keyboards and normal keyboards takes some time until I feel home.
The layout is also important and I wanted to have a similar setup everywhere.

Private computer is a MacBook and for work I have to use a Dell laptop. Most of the time it is connected to a external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

So I use a Apple Aluminum Keyboard in the USB version at work to have similar keys everywhere. It is similar to the MacBook keyboard and the Dell notebook keyboard is as well comparable.

Layout

The German keyboard has the special characters ([]{}\`~@) are not good reachable. I was looking for a different keyboard layout that works better for me.

I ruled out Dvorak and Neo in the early beginning, because they are completely different from the “normal” keyboards.
Using different computers and remote consoles makes to hard. And while I like the concept of rearranging the key am already quite fast on a German keyboard.

All the servers I work with use a US keyboard. So that was almost my first choice, but I need some German characters from time to time.

English International worked well, but the dead keys for ‘ and “ have been annoying

So I installed EurKEY on my computers, which works quite well for me.
http://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/layout.html

  • It is quite similar to the US keyboard
  • I can use the English International keyboard when I’m on a computer where I cannot install the EurKEY layout
  • Working with an US keyboard on a remote server is ok, because there I don’t need the German special characters

Special keys

Some special keys like Printscreen do not exist on and Apple keyboard. The easiest solution is to use AutoHotKey on Windows to fix that.
Remap F13 to Printscreen:

F13:: Send {PrintScreen}
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