I want to improve my touch typing skills on Linux. I’m curious:
- What tool or program would you recommend for learning touch typing on Linux?
- For someone whose native language isn’t English, would you recommend learning on their native keyboard layout or switching to the US QWERTY layout for programming purposes?
- TIPP10 is nice.
- I’d select that depending on what you will type most. Myself, I am German and I use UK international because it is nicer for programming.
Aspects you might want to consider are:
- it might be that you need to use different computers e.g. at work. Some standard layout is nicer then.
- You can type all kinds of fancy symbols using the .XCompose method and IMO this is the better way
- When you are programming, typing speed normally doesn’t matter. This also means that learning Dvirak and such is often a waste of time.
- Switching between layouts and keyboards always causes friction
1-the tool you want to get better at
Ex: if you are a software developer and mostly type obscure chains of semicolons, curly braces, and other infrequently used punctuation, using one of these websites to get better at quick brown fox typing will only half help.
2-your native layout for the same reason
I say this acknowledging there are two sorts of “I want to learn a skill” urges: the used and unused. I have plenty of things where I just wanted to learn the skill (take tying a few fancy knots for example). I don’t yet have a use for it. It’s just something I felt like learning. Touch typing feels more like the other kind, where the point of the skill is purely to use it. If you’re learning touch typing when you don’t type anything, do whatever makes you feel like you’ve learned something. If you’re learning touch typing to make typing faster, use the tools at hand.
->Put a box over the keyboard or turn your room lights off so you can’t see the labels very well.
I use keybr. Another good one to get your speed up after you’ve learnt to touch type is monkeytype
I use programmers Dvorak but I would recommend learning what you think would be best for you. If you frequently need to use someone elses keyboard, learn your native layout
I had bookmarked this great website a couple years ago, and incidentally I started using it only two weeks ago. It is really great, free, privacy friendly, and since it’s a website, os independent. And highly customisable.
https://keybr.com/I used this site to learn Colemak a couple years ago. 10/10
Keypunch is pretty good
“tools to use” Timone and Pumbaa taught me to type. https://www.reddit.com/r/lionking/comments/r4wykl/help_how_to_install_and_play_disneys_adventures/
Mavis Beacon is another popular one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typing
I bought Typing of the Dead to practice new keyboards when I get them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead
What tool or program would you recommend for learning touch typing on Linux?
I don’t have a particular recommendation, but in addition to local applications, there are also websites that you can try. The keyword you want to search for is “typing tutor”, e.g. on Debian.
For someone whose native language isn’t English, would you recommend learning on their native keyboard layout or switching to the US QWERTY layout for programming purposes?
For programming, the most important thing is that you can type the full set of characters present on US-QWERTY without too much acrobatics, because programming languages tend to use all/most of them.
Other than that it’s just down to your preference and comfort. I don’t recommend putting stock on any hype related to typing speed.
For the second part of your question, it wholly depends on your input language and keyboard layout.
As a Norwegian user I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than using the plain us keyboard.
Mind you Nordic QWERTY is fairly similar to most other QWERTY variants.
As for a tool, most people I know in a professional setting are at around 75-90 wpm, and never learned touch typing specifically. They just type, a lot, and repeatedly. There are many on-line typing trainers.
When it comes to programming, it’s not about typing quickly. Unless you’re churning out the most mindless of boilerplate it’s far more important to consider how to solve a task and why, then quickly shitting out lines of code.
Mind you this is all based on my experience, and your mileage may vary. Best of luck!
Honestly, I believe that, except for Russians or anyone whose language isn’t derived from Latin, using a US keyboard for programming is best, because you won’t be missing many keys. Maybe the French will miss the
ç, but you can learn the Unicode just like I did with the em dash and quotation marks:- Em Dash (—):
U+2014 - En Dash (–):
U+2013
Quotation marks:
- Left double quote (“):
U+201C - Right double quote (”):
U+201D - Left single quote (‘):
U+2018 - Right single quote (’):
U+2019
anyone using unicode quotes is insane, honestly any form of unicode character that is a duplicate of an ascii character should be avoided as it just adds uneeded complexity
use compose key and alt gr for rare, one of characters and you will never look back, stuff like diacritics/accents
You are the second person who mentions it but I don’t know what you mean. Got any links for compose key?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key the wikipedia page for it
in short, with it you can press Compose then some diacritic/accent then the letter
something like this <Compose> ` a -> à
unfortunaely it is a Linux and BSD thing only that stems from Xorg’s compatibility with many legacy system some of which had a dedicated compose key thus it was added to xkdb (which still used by Wayland compositors and thus the compose key works fine there) and to Xorg
In Plasma (formely KDE) there is a setting in the keyboard layout section that allows you to bind compose key to something like left control, GNOME as always doesnt has this by default you will need an extension, which one? idk, havent used gnome in years, you could also just figure out how to use xkdb directly but it is a mess and a complete pain to understand how to, I myself have no idea and would want to stay away from it, as for other DEs I am unaware if they provide a GUI for changing this or not
Maybe the French will miss the ç, but you can learn the Unicode
For something easier to remember, consider enabling a compose key:
I am a European who grew up with the German layout. For programming, its a disaster. Even back in 2006ish or so when I learned about AutoHotkey, I started using the US keyboard layout. After some time I switched entirely to the US layout. But recently, just a few years ago I found out there is a hybrid layout which is basically US, but with additional shortcuts to use my German characters (it shows up as this in KDE):
German (US)Luckily I learned programming when I was already using the NEO layout. I couldn’t imagine typing parentheses and the like in German…
- Em Dash (—):
I’ve heard klavaro is pretty well liked with regards to typing https://klavaro.sourceforge.io/en/index.html
