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What's the advantage of QMK over Linux/Gnome/IBus keyboard configuration

Oct 8, 2018466 VIEWS

All my computers are running Linux, and on my main comuter I have a keyboard with completely blank keycaps. I regularly type in a variety of languages, with a variety of layouts. For European languages using Latin script, I can just leave the keyboard in QWERTY layout and use the compose key to get any character I want. For languages using the Greek, Armenian or Cyrillic scripts, I choose an appropriate layout (Russian phonetic, Serbian, Greek monotonic, etc) and for Korean I use IBus Hangul.
I'm not particularly interested in underlighting the keys.
What benefit would I get from tinkering with QMK, rather than using the keyboard configuration that's already available in Linux, Gnome and IBus?

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Keithis

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livingspeedbump

6723

KeyChatter’s Owner and Editor-in-Chief

Oct 9, 2018

Well a really big advantage for using a layout stored on the keyboard and not relying on software is when using VMs, remote sessions, etc.
If you're using a QWERTY keyboard with a Russian layout on your local machine, log into a remote server, you're now just using QWERTY and not the Russian layout you may need. Also, if you have the layouts you want on your keyboard you can simply use your keyboard on any PC and have exactly what you need without any additional setup.
Additionally QMK just allows for many different functions and features (example: tapping SHIFT for CAPS LOCK and holding SHIFT for SHIFT, though there are a million examples you could use with QMK's vast feature list!)
Overall if you find you have no issues with using a software layout on your local machine and it works for you, there is no real reason to switch unless you want more versatility. At first I never really thought I needed QMK, but the more I use it the more I really find features I can't work without!

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