System76 Open Source Hotswap Mechanical Keyboard

[mmstick]

Design simplicity: a keyboard is seen mostly as an input device, adding hub feature may look overkill.

Many desktop chassis these days lack front I/O ports, and there are many who place their desktop tucked away such that accessing ports is difficult to begin with. Besides desktops, a lot of laptops also come with very few USB ports, so a hub is expected to be used when you’re working at a desk.

It’s not an unusual demand to have a USB hub built into a keyboard. Not a basic USB 2 hub, but a proper 10 Gbps hub. You could buy a standalone hub, but it’s nice to have it integrated right into the keyboard you’re already using to interface with the computer.

I, for example, use the ports on the Launch for a 5 TB portable hard drive, flash drives, USB-C charging cable, and a receiver for a wireless mouse. These are peripherals that make more sense for me to have plugged into a port in front of me, rather than on the floor behind a desktop.

[Rico]

It is a matter of preference.
Some people prefer the external USB hub strategy, and not have many cables going out of the keyboard.
Some appreciate the fact they can at least plug their mouse on it, or an USB stick.

I personnaly use cheap USB hubs as a ‘fuse’: sometimes you plug a baaad devices that kills your usb ports (it happened to me). If this happens I now just change the cheap hub.

[leviport]

I think it’s also important to consider that different people want different things out of their keyboards. Some value aesthetics above all else. These types of enthusiasts probably place a high degree of value on being able to use specific keycap sets, and that’s much easier to do when you have a fairly standard layout. Then you have people like me who will use mismatched SA’s out of PMK grab bags on my 3D printed and hand-wired custom layouts, because my goal is to create a keyboard that feels nice and helps me get work done. I generally pay little mind to how it looks, and if I do, it’s usually only an afterthought.

There’s a bit of a balancing act to it. I understand that utility/customization and aesthetics aren’t entirely mutually exclusive, but sometimes compromises must be made to one for the sake of the other. IMO, the “standard” layout has some major drawbacks, such as not being able to hit very many bottom row keys with my thumbs. My ergodox taught me just how useful my thumbs can be on a keyboard, and I want to use them for more than just one big, long space bar.

I also created myself a layout that most other probably wouldn’t appreciate very much. It has Dvorak on layer 1, QWERTY on layer 2, and layer 3 has several arrow clusters near the home row, along with multimedia keys and a few other things I use frequently. My modifiers are also completely non-standard on all layers. Launch’s flexibility allows me to make the keyboard suit my needs, instead of having to make myself conform to some kind of standard.

My final point: I think the point about keycap sets is being overblown a little. If there were such a thing as a standard keycap set, why do sets from Drop (check the MT3 Fairlane set currently up) come with so many extras and optional add-ons? Sure, Launch makes it more challenging than many keyboards out there, but if Launch’s innovations are worthwhile (and I think they absolutely are), then a Launch add-on kit may be on the horizon for many keycap sets in the future.

[dkrikun0]

I actually would love a big integrated USB hub in the keyboard. It would help my everyday work a lot.

Regarding the layout – there are certain design norms and traditions that are respected in the community.
Deviation from these norms needs to be justified, and when it comes from a new player in the keyboard field, layout changes are often then not frown upon.

IMO, the layout design is not good, albeit the research you have carried out, especially from an aesthetical point of view.

Metallic case is not necessary and advantage from a point of view of acoustics, and finish feel.

Marketing, price point, target audience etc – the issue here is that there are already quite a lot of offers in the keyboard space, with different price points, usecases and target audiences. Announcing a product like this is a huge risk, because what you could perceive as innovation is as grave as an offence, given the price point and the general context.

As a linux nerd, open source proponent on one hand, and as a hardened keyboard enthusiast on the other hand, I am very sad about this product and how it paned out.

[leviport]

@dkrikun0

there are certain design norms and traditions that are respected in the community.
Deviation from these norms needs to be justified, and when it comes from a new player in the keyboard field, layout changes are often then not frown upon.

I feel the deviation is both minor and justified. Can you help me understand why you think it isn’t? I come from a background of using an Ergodox for the last 5 or so years. When it comes to the Ergodox, there isn’t really anything remaining of the norms of conventional layouts. Maybe I missed the dissent, but I don’t recall anyone disliking the Ergodox’s layout enough to perceive it as a grave offense.

[dkrikun0]

As I see it, there are more stable layout/form-factors and less stable ones.

For example, 60% and TKL are very stable. Any deviation form the norm would need a very strong justification.
65% is a bit less stable, there are are still variations, especially near the arrow and the nav cluster.
Split ergo layouts are relatively unstable.

Introducing an breaking offset to the left side is a such a bold breach of what is accepted in any possible aspect, whether it is ergonomics, aesthetics, or compatibility, that if a new player coming to the keyboard community will just come and announce, there is no way they will get any adequate feedback. It is very very hard to have a look at this layout and price point together and to respond to this seriously, no matter how much research have been put into it.

Also, I cannot but wonder if the designers of the board were in touch with the keyboard enthusiast community before announcing it?

[leviport]

So if I’m getting the analogy correct, you’re drawing parallels between keyboard layouts and software. Something like a Model M layout would be comparable to Debian Stable, and something like the Ergodox layout is more like Arch. If I have that right, then my point is that I don’t see Debian users taking offense at the mere existence of Arch, or vice-versa. Users should use the distro that suits their needs, and more variety means more people can benefit.

It seems normal for users to see something new/different and say, “That’s not for me, I’ll buy something else.” What I’m surprised by are the number of people taking this new/different thing as a personal affront. As you said, there are many options out there. This is wonderful, in my opinion. Everyone is different and wants different things. The more choices that exist, the more people can find a keyboard that suits their needs.

[dkrikun0]

I should be very careful here, as I am not that well versed in the linux distro scene, but if you insist.
I would imagine Debian hackers would not be offended by Arch, but what I feel here is more like Ubuntu people coming into OpenBSD, and be like: “We did the research how to do the OpenBSD right, and we are going to sell our UbuntuBSD for $$$”
I hope my metaphor is not wildly inaccurate here

[Deadeye]

Tossing my two cents into the air as I sip my coffee here;

I think it’s important to consider who this keyboard might be for - and how that may or may not relate to this community. Most of the keyboards we discuss here are aimed somewhere into the keyboard community - or into the adjacent space of gaming. It’s usually very easy to distinguish those - and when there’s overlap, there tends to be some laughs and maybe the occasional small innovation.

While it’s only natural to consider this keyboard through the lens of custom and commercial boards we know, it might not be totally fitting to judge it with the same criteria - unless we’re talking about a demographic-specific review. That is, I’m looking to make the distinction between this keyboard’s value to the custom keyboard community and this keyboard’s value within its intended lane.

As a custom / high-end commercial the way we tend to to think of them here, this product is something of a mildly-curious “meh” - but I believe that’s because the designers weren’t aiming in that direction.

I think this keyboard is for a certain kind of person; one that isn’t otherwise specifically into keyboards - but uses one often and knows they want something better. Specifically, this person wants something well-built, adaptable, versatile, and open-source - like their favorite Unix-based operating system. It doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing or approachable in a traditional sense - just malleable, effective, and functionally elegant. Material quality is a plus.

For most folks in the keyboard hobby itself, this keeb probably isn’t it for plenty of reasons. For someone who isn’t looking for a new hobby (or a showpiece keeb) but that wants a keyboard with a personality like Linux - well, this might be it. I blank on his name, but the guy from ShortCircuit makes for a good example of who I’m thinking of.

Basically, a demographic that might otherwise be strongly considering other products in the System76 family (but who isn’t otherwise knee-deep in the keebverse). For these folks, I honestly think this product makes plenty of sense.

@jackpot51 I can tell that you and the rest of the team have put a lot of work and passion into this project - and for what it’s worth I think you have a strong product for a very specific market. Harsh criticism from demographics outside those you’re aiming for can be frustrating, but I promise it can also be useful.

My advice to you moving forward is to take criticism like that you see here as an indicator of where the demographic boundaries lay for your products. For any and every product, there will be harsh criticism available - take it for what its worth, whether or not you find agreement with it. Feel free to offer up thought processes and reasoning as you have here - I think that’s only a good thing - but a defensive posture towards the public won’t help your efforts regardless of any valid points you may have to make.

Keep it positive even in the face of “hate” - articulate what you have to offer and/or why you do as you do, and then move on to folks more specifically interested in what you are doing. I think you’ll be more likely to at least earn some respect for the brand from those who otherwise aren’t going to be customers - respect which may find its way to people who will be customers.

[BrickParade]

I’ve been watching this thread and wanted to add my thoughts but I think @Deadeye has basically said it all. The market for the board and the audience on this site have very little overlap. Neither group is right, there is just a mismatch in priorities.

[dkrikun0]

Whereas it is definaetily not suited well for the keyboard enthusiast market, I could hardly think of a market that it is suited for.
There are already well established keyboards like HHKB, Realforce and Leopold to name that are: malleable, effective, functionally elegant, and by a wide margin so.
In regard to this being an open-source design. Well, this is nice, and it is meaningful in general. However, this is also a costly physical object to produce. This is not similar to, for example, RISC-V on one hand, or Lily58, on the other hand, and it makes little sense to the end user.

[mmstick]

@Deadeye

My advice to you moving forward is to take criticism like that you see here as an indicator of where the demographic boundaries lay for your products.

We take criticism all the time, and Pop!_OS is the result of years of criticism in different areas of Linux, Ubuntu, GNOME, and Pop itself. You can’t be a software engineer and be unable to accept criticism at the same time. The issue has little to do with criticism at all, and more to do with random assumptions about the design, and general gatekeeping behavior that Launch is a horrible design because it’s not designed to your specific vision (and by your, I am referring to the people commenting on this thread in general). If there was a one fit solution that everyone agreed upon as being the only good design, there wouldn’t be a keyboard enthusiast community, or iterations upon keyboard designs at all.

I can clearly see that there’s a sort of “I’m a superior keyboard enthusiast than you are” sort of mentality going on here, as if the only valid representative of “keyboard enthusiast community” is yourself. That there couldn’t possibly be professional keyboard enthusiasts already working here that have been guiding and iterating on the design process prototype after prototype over the last year.

The design of the Launch is the result of countless iterations and UX testing from people who have a lot of experience with custom building keyboards, designing PCBs, and writing firmware, and operating systems. All you really had to do if you had questions was to simply ask about why certain things are designed the way that they are. Not resorting to condescendingly trashing members of the very community you claim to be a part of.

@dkrikun0

I would imagine Debian hackers would not be offended by Arch, but what I feel here is more like Ubuntu people coming into OpenBSD, and be like: “We did the research how to do the OpenBSD right, and we are going to sell our UbuntuBSD for $$$”

I’m honestly confused at how you come to the conclusion that System76 is somehow making claims that they are the only people who know to do keyboards right. There are plenty of companies selling their custom keyboards for $$$ so you should be lashing out at them as well, by this logic.

But I also don’t think the OpenBSD community would even be phased by a theoretical Ubuntu BSD. Debian is already available in a BSD variety, and much of the Debian maintainers are Ubuntu employees. There’s nothing wrong with having competition or allowing different people to try out different ideas. This has been one of the greatest strengths of open source and Linux.

@dkrikun0

Whereas it is definaetily not suited well for the keyboard enthusiast market, I could hardly think of a market that it is suited for.

Honestly, the free market gets to decide that. Not you.

[leviport]

@dkrikun0

There are already well established keyboards like HHKB, Realforce and Leopold to name that are: malleable, effective, functionally elegant, and by a wide margin so.

I have a Realforce (uniform 55g) that I absolutely love. Topre domes are heavenly, IMO. But the thing I hate the most about it is it’s distinct lack of malleability. The only meaningful customization I can make to it is the DIP switch on the bottom that swaps Caps and Ctrl. I appreciate having that much control, but QMK has spoiled me and made me long for more. The control I have over Launch is in a different league entirely.

[Dr.Doof]

none of the keyboards you named have all, or even most of the functionality of the launch keyboard, only the hhkb has a USB hub, and none of them are fully customizable without third party hardware. I don’t think their intention with opensourcing the project was that people would go out and CNC their own individual unit, but rather that people could build on it/customize it to their liking, and perhaps 3d print a single unit, or run a small private gb of cnc’d units.

that being said, the employees of sys76 that are in this thread have handled themselves poorly, we as members of the keyboard community, may have shit on the board more than was strictly necessary, but it was in good fun, and wasn’t sent directly to the company, I’m sorry if you’re offended by our opinions on your work, but responding in kind isn’t going to solve that, but rather sully our opinions of sys76 as whole.

[jackpot51]

It actually was sent to us, under the guise of serious feedback. That is why I was so (probably unnecessarily) mad in my first comment here.

[Dr.Doof]

thats a shitty thing for someone to do, I’m sorry that happened.

[Deadeye]

@mmstick

I can clearly see that there’s a sort of “I’m a superior keyboard enthusiast than you are” sort of mentality going on here, as if the only valid representative of “keyboard enthusiast community” is yourself. That there couldn’t possibly be professional keyboard enthusiasts already working here that have been guiding and iterating on the design process prototype after prototype over the last year.

Yikes.

Not what I was getting at even a little bit - and even if you’re speaking generally, this is not the way to address any community - even if your assessment is 100% correct (which I have not and will not comment on one way or another).

The only tastes I can actually speak for are my own - I’ve just been watching reaction to this keyboard over time and seeing which people respond positively and which people don’t. This isn’t the first thread on this forum about your keyboard, but this is the first time I’ve opined about it or your company on this forum - other than to praise your case designs a time or two.

I’m trying to help you here - I think the negative reaction in this thread today has more to do with argumentativeness from the team and less to do with the keyboard or its design philosophy, which plenty have already spoken their peace about.

It’s all fine and good to address misconceptions where you see them - in fact, I encourage it. If done in a positive way, that kind of interaction can be good for your band. Even if you don’t convince the person you’re talking to, the positive and informative record is there for others to see, which can only do good for you.

The problem is that you’re talking down to potential customers, or people that know potential customers - and worse, making assumptions about them just as they may make about your products.

Nothing helps like a personal referral - and nothing dooms brand loyalty like detraction by a friend. Nothing, of course, except a negative personal interaction with a member of the team.

Arguing with detractors will never go positively for a brand. There are few hard rules in life - and as far as I can tell, this is indeed one of them.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt, I even defended you to my peers - and you responded with… what you did.

I sincerely hope that System76 is better represented moving forward, because you did no favors for its image or that of its products today. I’d like to see cool heads prevail here, and I’d not only like the community to see what value lies in the Launch keyboard, but also for you to see the value in this community - I don’t believe I have much more to contribute to that process here, however.

Good luck to you.

[smallchungus]

Opinions are like a**les. Everyone has one. I actually bought the launch with my own money. I cancelled my Flex-Batch GMMK Pro reservation and bought the launch instead and I use it every day for work. I love this keyboard, support has been stellar and the USB hub aspect gets used for my mouse dongle, SD reader, and occasionally my webcam (I like to leave it unplugged). I am currently using it on a work laptop and a very old Macbook pro. However I anticipate switching to a newer gen Mac soon and I know the integrated USB hub will become very appreciated when that time comes…

Edit:
As for Jeremy and the team… I do think Deadeye has a point with the approach taken by S76 in terms of trying to bring this to the keeb community. Keep in mind, and this is my opinion, the keeb community in general is one of the harshest, most toxic, and unnecessarily elitist communities that I’ve been a part of. Of course everyone’s opinion is different. If you use Glorious’ entry into the market as an example - they had to do a lot of community boot licking because that was their target market and they wanted to be a “good” company that poised itself as a member of the community. I believe the overall perception of the company is generally pretty good because of it; by no means undeserved.
With that said, I think perhaps giving more insight into the design process, decision making and overall thought behind the launch would serve better for not only S76 but also the baseless detractors. A little perspective goes a long way.

[leviport]

@Deadeye

The problem is that you’re talking down to potential customers, or people that know potential customers - and worse, making assumptions about them just as they may make about your products.

To be fair, the people that prompted @jackpot51 to respond don’t seem like potential customers, nor people who would recommend the Launch to their friends. Their minds seemed pretty made up already, lol.

But yes, it’s better when community engagement goes more positively. I think there’s a misconception that System76 didn’t bother engaging with the community at all before/during the creation of Launch, but I can assure all concerned that this isn’t the case. We may not have engaged under the banner of System76, but many of us have been active in various mechanical keyboard hangouts for many years. Heck, we even wanted to host a Denver meetup at our factory, but covid put the kibosh on that pretty quickly.

That’s part of my confusion/frustration in seeing Launch downright lambasted for such minor layout changes, when not a single day goes by where I don’t see appreciation of Alice, Planck/Preonic, or Ergodox builds somewhere in these places. I guess maybe it falls into sort of an uncanny territory since the changes are relatively minor? The kinds of users who prefer conventional layouts might just be quicker to dismiss layouts that are extremely different, but since Launch is almost conventional, the differences are possibly being perceived in a different light and by different users. I dunno, I’m just spitballing here.

Anyway, there has definitely been demand for it, so we can’t be completely crazy. Subjectively, I can say it is now my favorite keyboard. I swapped my Jades for Navies and made some heavy layout customizations, and I may even like it better than the Ergodox now.

If anyone has more questions about it, I’d love to discuss it further. I’m the guy who hand-wired the prototypes, so I was around for most of the R&D process.

[vintonole]

This is exactly the sort of keyboard I was looking for when I started searching for something to replace and improve on the stock Apple ‘magic’ keyboard. The usb ports would have been a plus. If you’ve ever used an iMac you’d know why. My holy grail turned out to be a Vinpok Taptek, which stabbed me in the heart with its fatal flaws. This has standard switches though, but that price would have scared me away, probably. (as I type this on a Corne which cost more and has half the keys)