New Keyboard Enthusiast

[cam]

Hi,

A bit of background... I am 37 french idiot and I used a computer for a bit more than 20 years. I've logically used an azerty keyboard for years and to be honest I hated it probably since my first laptop because of the numbers (you have to use shift key to get numbers... very annoying).

I used windows computers at first because that's mostly how it happens at least in the 90s. I got pretty sick of windows very soon and had a friend who used linux so he got me into ubuntu. I've used a good number of linux distros over the years like ubuntu, debian, mandrake (Mandriva) and I finished on archlinux which definitely my linux distribution of choice!

Around 2010, I worked with my French colleagues with a Norwegian company and they gave us qwerty laptops... This is when I realised that azerty sucks big. I got a macbook pro that year. I you thought azerty was the worst then now you know mac azerty is terrible! Not only terrible but also pretty rare and not very used (proportionally worldwide).
Since I use a keyboard every day, at work and at home, I've been looking for years for keyboard I love to use without much success to be honest. I recently bought a Logitech MX Keys to replace the big macos aluminium keyboard. I want to state that I've used a lot of Logitech hardware over 15 years and I've been so disappointed at their software. I've complained a lot to them and they never improved their software.
So I thought, alright... **** this! I'm going all the way to the ANSI US layout which I will tweak to get accents as we use them a lot in France. I really like this idea because now I'll have something that is weird in France, sure! But pretty regular if you consider worldwide market. And now I'm sure I'll find a great keyboard that suits my needs and will be able keep it for a long time.

So I recently ordered a Drop CTRL in ANSI layout which I have now to wait for... Can't wait 

[suicidal_orange]

Welcome to geekhack

I wasn't aware that AZERTY needed shift for numbers, that sounds really annoying!  There are some fun things you can do with a programmable keyboard, you could make it so the rest of the board is normal but on the default layer the number keys are shifted, then your shift keys would actually be FN keys and on the layer they activate everything else is shifted except the numbers.  Bit late for that advice though...

I used ANSI on a HHKB for a couple of months so backspace was where the top of ISO enter should be and I adjusted to that, but I still hit the same place for enter.  Hopefully you don't have this problem

[cam]

Thanks.
I know I could have used layers and such... Actually before buying the Drop I thought I could try karabiner on mac to get rid of Logitech options but I remembered when I was using the qwerty and liked it so let's change it all! And I'm happy about it  )

I also uses computers only in english since my linux era as I find french pretty stupid on how it is translated. It's not clear to understand what's the function or something else do... The point in going english was for me to get help from anyone anywhere and we could have the same interface. So People find it annoying to use my computer because it's in english... They are going to hate my keyboard  but I don't care. Actually if nobody uses my computer except me is great!