That and a Few Bucks Will Get You a Bus Ride

[Phoronix] A Gaming Mouse Vendor That Has Linux Drivers:

Stefan Achatz has been working with a vendor known as Roccat to improve their Linux support. Roccat manufactures [...]

1. keyboards with the broken key layouts that move the [\] key around so it's non-standard
2. mice with two equal-sized buttons and a bunch of mini-buttons and rollies and scrollies, and ...

.. but sadly, nothing I can use.  Nothing my peer group uses, if I can drag in the people I work with.

We use the third button, for gaming and for work.  We use the backspace or pipe key at times.  We use a regularly-sized backspace key.  We rather expect the key layout will not be arbitrarily fucked with, lest we become unable to use the corrupted layout or - worse - become accustomed to the corrupted layout and can no longer use regular gear.

Mice:

• three equal buttons.  No?  Fail.

Keyboards:

• regular backspace, pipe, enter, shift, space bar keys, and a regular wasd-layout arrow-key matrix.  No?  Fail.

Why is it so hard to find a working - as in can use to do work - mouse and keyboard set?  Right now, this very earnest and well-intentioned company cannot sell me a single thing, for my was-$15-in-1998 three-button first-gen Logitech First Mouse beats their pretty cadillac.  A lenovo thinkstation keyboard offers me speed, accuracy and keys where I need them;  the Roccat gear does not.

I could consider pretty, broken gear for gaming, or for fun pursuits, but I think I covered that in the "become accustomed to broken layout" comment above.  And I'm so disappointed that this company has no value for me, today, since it seems to be making a great effort to get its unusable gear out to everyone who wants to buy it.  A great company, potentially, that can't offer me something even if I waved a big bag o' money at it.