Why ortholinear and not split column?

Because of my ignorance, I thought it’s the same thing.

What I actually meant to say is “not staggered”.

I don't bother with a dedicated capslock key. I set it up so hitting left and right shift at the same time is caps lock. Also have an arrow layer under my right hand with home/end and pgup/pgdown within easy reach. Could never get used to vi cursor navigation.

Yep, trying to type a long number on the top row is super tedious to me. I just use a layer under my right hand for 10-key.

There are definitely quiet mechanical switches out there. I'm pretty happy with my Kailh LP Whale silent tactiles. My old IBM style was so loud at night.

KDE has a phone connection program called KDE Connect that lets you use your phone as input.

My back and shoulders felt so much better when I mounted my spliit keyboard floating under my desk, halves shoulder width apart. Not just arms on the armrests, shoulders back against the chair instead of rounded forward. I can't go back. Nevermind that typing that way with colemak and hardly moving my fingers feels like magic.

I have written many scripts with succinct wording. There were absolutely more non-alphanumeric character. Try Perl, it's fun.

I mapped them to the row above the home row, in order of bendy complication. So it's {[<(/ for the left hand, and \)>]} for the right. I just hold them down for the punctuation instead of letters. So much easier, imo.