The Best Open-Source (Libre) Mechanical Keyboard!
Hi, everyone.
Unfortunately, the https://h-node.org/hardware/catalogue/en website doesn’t have a separate “Keyboard” section.
There’s also no explanation about open-source keyboards—if it’s implied that you can use any keyboard and it’s safe for users running Linux Libre, then this section should be created instead of leaving it blank!
Or are users supposed to figure it out on their own or guess?
In practice, modern keyboards from “evil corporations” can have keyloggers installed that send everything you type to a third party.
It’s even possible to install one in a mouse or simply in the cable—there are plenty of videos like that on YouTube...
From what I found online with a free GPL 2 license and high quality, it was a keyboard from "Keychron". (Keychron Q5 HE)
https://github.com/keychron/qmk_firmware
https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q5-he-qmk-wireless-custom-keyboard
or
https://system76.com/keyboards
Please let me know what you recommend using
I'm talking about a situation where I want to buy a keyboard and start using it right away—in other words, a ready-made solution.
You might find this information interesting—there's a huge selection of keyboards here => https://github.com/help-14/mechanical-keyboard
When I hear "open source," I usually ask: what are these sores, and why would anyone want them to be "open"? Jokes aside, since you're on the Trisquel forum, I highly recommend reading the essay "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software" - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html. We care about software freedom.
But to your point almost any standard USB keyboard is going to work perfectly fine on Trisquel right out of the box. Because they conform to the USB HID (Human Interface Device) standard, the Linux-libre kernel already has all the free drivers it needs to communicate with them. You plug it in, it says "I am a keyboard," and the kernel knows exactly how to handle it without needing you to install anything.
The solution as it usually is, is to go back in time to before evil corpos had the ability to add keyloggers let alone ones with network access.
The IBM M1 comes to mind from the 1990s, or its modern equivalent the Unicomp EnduraPro.
Remmember, No software at all is almost always better than Free software is always better than non-free software....