I hear that you hardly ever use the right shift and that you play games with it.
But just because you personally donāt use something, ā¦ Are you saying we must all be just like you, and type just what you do? That is just disrespect, of others I think. I use the full range of keys offered to me, and that definitely includes UPPER CASE, ON BOTH THE RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS.
I was not being disrespectful just because you took it as such. Iām saying that market demand and the way things are manufactured drive the options available to the consumer. If you have a beef then it is with that.
Just 2 cents: I love my Librem13v3. But i wouldnāt own one, would Purism not have provided it with my used to keyboard-layout (QWERTZ, DE).
@Kyle_Rankin Without the keyboard-layout users are used to, Purism will sell much less devices than they could. Only some take the unnecessary hurdle to deal with customs & the like due to having to order from the US. But wrong keyboard-layout probably is the final show-stopper for most of the rest of potential non-US-buyers.
I think the thing that people are not perhaps understanding here is that while your point is true, it doesnāt mean anything to Purism if catering to international keyboard demands would end up costing Purism for each sale because they couldnāt get enough sales on those custom keyboards to make it cost effective. This is what happened in the past, and why the options are not available now. So it would seem that while they could sell more international models, the quantity of those sales were not enough to justify the expense of catering to that demand.
A company like Purism, small and not operating on a multi-million dollar budget, has to deal with such constraints as they are limiting factors that canāt be circumvented; even with all the wishful thinking in the world.
I mean I sympathize with you all wanting the different layout. I really do.
If you keep supporting the company they may one day have more leverage to make custom layouts possible again. Or if you can help increase the demand for your locale this would also help.
Absolutely fair point and understandable.
I remember, i once made a suggestion, that Purism could separately sell keycaps. Those ones should neither be to expensive, nor would they occupy a lot of storage space. That way people willing to go for a compromise could buy a completely assembled laptop with US-keyboard-layout + keycaps regarding their used to layout. I would have taken this road would it have been on offer.
I think, there was even a discussion on how to change the caps (lift on one side and drag sideways to the other).
Personally i wasted a second thinking of buying a 14 and handing my 13v3 over to my wife. But even typing blindly, from time to time i need to have a look. And so no keyboard in my used layout - no matter which way to properly archieve that - means, no 14.
Being a big advocate for Purism within my country, i already promoted the 14 quite a bit during the last days as it sound marvelous. But everybody brings up the keyboard-nogoā¦
I think thereās a tool for getting the caps off.
Just to shout into the wind with everyone else 
Iāve been typing for over 30 years on all sorts of keyboards and I already know this layout on the 14" will not work for me. Makes me sad because I would soooo love to replace my 13"v3 I bought from Purism with this 14" ā it seems great on all other fronts!
Which actually brings up another point, lack of consistency. 
The 13" laptops all have the right Shift|Fn key pair, which is fine by me, and now this new one has Up|Shift. So if you had to alter your typing to work with the 13" youāll now have to re-alter for this 14".
but that can be remapped in the base layer through software to suit your needs ā¦ is this correct ?
Yes, you can remap the keys in Linux. See:
What about a configurable ortholinear keyboard? That way everyone gets
to do their own layout without favour over which keys go where (do try using one exclusively for at least a week before you rubbish or dismiss the idea). Buyers could opt to receive a ready-to-use out-of-the-box version or opt to receive the laptop with a separate set of yet-to-be-attached keycaps (suited to oneās primary language if you like).
Probably, but the labels would be incorrect, of course. Stickers are an option there, but probably not recommended for such a commonly press-and-hold type key.
Also, with this layout you might notice the keys on that row are slightly off their usual positions as you move towards the right side, e.g. the ? key is nearly aligned with the " key. These sorts of seemingly small quirks can really drive a touch typist mad.
Anyway, Iāve spent more time on this than is warranted. Some like the layout, some donāt. There are other laptops on the market, itās not like Iām forced to buy this one. Iām just disappointed in one of my favorite builders ā canāt please all of us!
I wonder if this could be solved with a pre-order type approach? Effectively akin to crowdfunding but something like you pre-order a librem14 with a DE keyboard. If 500 orders are placed that month (or whatever the limit is to make it financially viable) the orders are fulfilled and if not theyāre refunded or offered to switch to a different layout?
Iām pretty sure thatās already been attempted.
So what was the result? Not enough interest?
As you can see, theyāre not offering any other keyboard layouts.
This is not a compromise, this is a defect. And I have it on my current laptop Lenovo Ideapad 510S-14ISK - very similar keyboard layout (I didnāt realized the issue, when I bought it 3 years ago).
Iāve managed to live with it by remapping the keys:
Yes, the right SHIFT is too far away, but also the right CTRL is too close to the āJā key !!
So yes, my arrows keys are really messed up right now, but - somewhat luckly - Iām a vim user.
All the typing tutorials that I ever seen recommend using the right SHIFT to upper case the left hand keysā¦ I see people here having success typing āQā, āAā, āZā, ā!ā using the left SHIFTā¦ wellā¦ thatās weird/not ergonomic/awkward/slow - IMOā¦
I canāt afford this laptop. Iām commenting here hoping to stop this defect spreading even moreā¦ especially on Purism hardware which I like.
Just found this:
āIāve made a big mistakeā¦ I accidently chose one with such an unforgivable flaw in the keyboard, that my constant typos - while I was making notes during Monday morning meetings on the projector - became a running joke thoughout the company.ā ā Linus (Linus Tech Tips)
