Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

Linux kernel project boss Linus Torvalds has re-joined the ranks of full-size mechanical keyboard aficionados.

The penguin emperor on Sunday revealed he's spent the last six months using what he described as "a quieter low-profile keyboard".

"I gave it half a year thinking I'd get used it, but I'm back to the noisy clackety-clack of clicky blue Cherry switches," he wrote, referring to the mechanical key switches made by German company Cherry, which promotes them as "clicky and noticeable" as they produce both tactile and audible feedback with every keystroke.

"It seems I need the audible (or perhaps tactile) feedback to avoid the typing mistakes that I just kept doing."

He's now unsure why he conducted the keyboard experiment.

"It's not like I'm in some office where the noise of my keyboard can disturb others," wrote the work-from-home pioneer.

"I mention this only in case people have reacted to my typos," he added. "Or maybe it's just me, and I'm just conveniently blaming the keyboard.

"Anyway, going forward, I will now conveniently blame autocorrect since I can't blame the keyboard."

If Torvalds is making typos, they're not delaying work on version 6.15 of the Linux kernel, which he on Sunday described as "fairly normal" after producing a sixth release candidate.

"We've got a bit more commits than we did in rc5, which isn't the trend I want to see as the release progresses, but the difference isn't all that big and it feels more like just the normal noise in timing fluctuation in pull requests of fixes than any real signal," he wrote.

"So I won't worry about it. We've got another two weeks to go in the normal release schedule, and it still feels like everything is on track."

The kernel-watchers at Phoronix rate early work on Intel's Advanced Performance Extensions, drivers for Nvidia products written in Rust, and new code to speed boot times as among the most exciting additions to the project. ®