We like knocking down the garden wall wherever we can. Your technology is your technology after all; you should be able to change it in any way that suits your needs. That’s why we’re making a keyboard. Everyone uses their keyboard differently due to ergonomics, convenience, or to account for a dominant hand, and it’s time we created a keyboard to accommodate that.

CEO Carl Richell sat down for an interview with us at a CDC-approved distance to discuss plans for System76’s latest project: The Launch Configurable Keyboard.

What were the most important things you wanted to address when designing a keyboard?

Most keyboards that we’ve studied were derived from what already existed. Instead we’re thinking about hands and fingers and how we use keyboards to interface with operating systems—a keyboard is a tool first. In our research, we found that spacebars typically, for example, are way too long, which means your strongest digit, your thumb, isn’t very useful. Most of the time you use your pinkie because useful keys are out at the extremities of the keyboard—so we wanted to change that. We wanted a better layout.

The second piece is configurability. A lot of our customers are experts in their field and they have their own unique shortcuts and tools—making a keyboard programmable for specific tools makes it a better interface for using that tool. Easy configurability—we made all the keys only 3 sizes so you can swap them. And we’re building software that makes it easy to change your configuration and add function layers to suit your needs.

Did you have any outside inspiration for the design?

Yes. Since we went about this project from a “tool first” design, we drew inspiration from other specialty tools in adjacent industries. For example, John Grano, our mechanical engineer, has a mouse which has 360-degree movement that’s specific to CAD work, but even for a novice, it makes things easier. Another example is the Davinci Resolve panels which make editing videos easier for that specific task. We wanted to apply those types of ideas to make a keyboard more useful for everyone.

So we made a tool that works with Pop!_OS to make your tools better and problem-solve easier and more efficiently.

What’s been the biggest challenge in the project?



Well, because we always take an iterative approach to everything we do, it hasn’t been extremely difficult to develop. We’re also a company full of keyboard geeks so we had a lot of existing knowledge to pull from. We started with theories and ideas, we found some of them worked very well, and some things didn’t (like the 1-unit right shift key), and we moved forward from there, repeating the process as necessary. So it wasn’t really a challenge, but the natural part of developing a product: You conduct research, make assumptions, test, iterate, then do it all again.

Has System76 ever tried to make a keyboard before?

Nope, this is the first time around on this particular project!

What are you most proud of with this project?

The harmony between physical hardware and the operating system. For example, auto tiling in our upcoming Pop!_OS 20.04 release is designed to work extremely well with this keyboard, and I think that people are going to really respond to it—it’s going to be a completely new and amazing experience, and I think that folks are going to start to really see why we’ve decided to bring all of the different silos, from hardware to manufacturing to OS, all in-house under one roof.

What about a total beginner, what would they get out of it?

It doesn’t necessarily have to feel like something different—you can plug it in and use it like any other keyboard. But you’re going to have less strain on your hands, because instead of using your pinkies, you’ll use your thumbs for common keystrokes and key combinations. Or instead of having to reach very far, keys like backspace can be very easy to reach now.

Another thing that we found with our research is that most people use either their right or left thumb for the spacebar, but rarely both. So we split the spacebar so that you can assign one button to another task if you are one of those people, like shift or backspace.

Also, because the keyboard lacks a number pad, your mouse will be much closer so you won’t need to reach as far when you need to go to the mouse.

When will it be available?

Late summer is when we’re hoping to bring it to market.

What else have I not asked that you want to tell people about this keyboard?

The harmony between our System76 hardware and our Pop!_OS software is really going to be key for this particular project.