The DEs listed for a distro will be ones you can get out of the box, i.e. you install the distro and it already has the DE. However, you can then install pretty much any DE/WM on pretty much any distro. Most of the time, you’ll also get a login screen where you can choose between different DEs, so you can try multiple on the same distro to see how you like them.

Most of the ‘random desktops’ will be window managers, there are just a few main DEs, which each have a window manager bundled in. If you take one of the separate window managers (which can be tiling, stacking, or a mix) you’ll just have a bit more work to do to make it like you want, but they can have more customisation than full DEs. You can make most window managers look like pretty much any DE, but not necessarily the other way around. If you look at [email protected], most of those are window managers. Saying they’re confusing to understand and you don’t want to have to customise them to make them look nice and add any separate programs you need for a full system is fair, but saying they’re ugly is kinda nonsensical, since you can make them look however you like.

As for why some distros’ Plasmas look different, that’s just because it is itself quite customisable (from what I hear, the most customisable of the mainstream DEs). So if you install XeroLinux, you could customise it to look like stock Plasma, and vice versa.

Long story short, don’t choose a distro based on their default DE or vice versa, don’t disregard window managers out of hand (but do if you just want a full out-of-the-box environment), and look at different distros’ customisations, as well as [email protected] and similar, to see what DEs can look like you want, but again you don’t have to decide distro based on that.

Aha. That all makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t personally have so much duplication, though, and get shift & modkeys on the thumbs to make easy combos, but it’s fine if you want them elsewhere. Do you use function keys that often? I just realised I use them so much I forgot to setup a layer for them, but that at least seems like it could go on one of the pinky keys. And a rotary encoder there would make heaps of sense.

That’s quite an interesting layout. Is the vertical thumbkey easy to press? And what’s the right arrow you’ve got in both thumb clusters? Does having a letter key on the thumb feel natural?

Yep, that was it. Thanks for the reminder.

It works great for me on Arch with Hyprland, even though that really isn’t designed with touch in mind. I think there are some programs that provide touch gestures generically (egg something comes to mind?), but I’ve never needed them. I’m sure if you go with Gnome or something it would work great, so long as the touchscreen is recognised properly (I’ve never had issues, but that doesn’t say much about if you would). I’d just get a live USB with whatever you would install, and see if it physically works. If it does, I’m sure there’s a DE/WM that fits the workflow you want.

You could do that at the firmware level, with QMK or ZMK macros (or, presumably, whatever other firmware). It might be a long one, but launching an application or the like could just be typing the combination that runs it. I haven’t used KDE, but something like super, then type the name, then enter, should work.

Having said that, a quick look at keyd proposed by the other replier does seem like it has more than enough capability, and if you have one setup you want to use it for and not move the keyboard between computers, it very well might be the better choice for you.

I have two questions:

1. How useful do you find the encoder? All the other keyboards I’ve seen with encoders seem badly placed, but is yours close enough to the resting thumb position that you can use it without moving from the home row?
2. Where did you get the carrying case? I’ve got a corne, but really just leave it at home and use the laptop keyboard when I’m elsewhere because I don’t like just leaving it loose in my bag.

I’m not OP, and one-haned keyboards definitely exist (I can’t remember the name, but I think there’s even an 8-key complete layout). However, since they said 34-key split, I’d assume the other half’s in the bag, or otherwise offscreen.