 Back in 2021, I made this video here and in that video, I talk about how hard it is to abandon your mouse and move to a keyboard-centric workflow. And over the course of the last two years, I've made several attempts to abandon my mouse in order to maintain my hands in one single position so that I can kind of reduce repetitive stress and all this stuff, right? Every time I try, I completely fail because I'm so used to reaching over and using a mouse. Now, since that video I pointed to, I have moved from a mouse to a trackball. And I like this thing. This is the Alicom Huge and it is good. In fact, I like it so much. I bought a second one, there's one behind my desk and I bought a couple other ones as well. Actually, I have another one here, see? And I have a lot of trackballs lying around but I still have hopes of having a workflow where I no longer have to actually use a mouse ever because I don't like moving. I spend most of my time with my hands on my keyboard. I use VIM so most of my writing and stuff is done with the VIM motions enabled and even when I'm not using VIM or I'm using like VS Code, I also have VIM motions. I have a VIM extension for Firefox so I can move between websites and all of the links and stuff like that with the keyboard. I have key bindings enabled throughout my entire window manager, of course, and I have key bindings for my workflow in OBS and in Audacity and in several other applications that I use constantly. But even though all of that is true, I still find myself using the mouse quite often. It has become a very hard habit to break because I'm so used to using the scroll wheel to scroll between pages on a, you know, with a website or when I'm using Kaden Live, I use the scroll wheel, the scroll between the timeline and stuff like that. So I use the mouse all the time despite the fact that I don't want to. So I've been thinking about this for quite a while and I think it's time for me to start another challenge. Now, I know what you're thinking. Matt, aren't you already on a challenge? You're using a same distro for two years. You're doing a challenge for two years. What could possibly be the purpose of starting another challenge? Well, I really, really want to stop using my mouse as much as possible. And I say as much as possible because there are some hindrances on this quest that I know are there. And I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. But my goal here is for the next six months to not use my mouse at all unless I absolutely have to. I'm putting that proviso on there. We'll talk about that in a second. But the goal is to use the mouse as little as possible to learn or enable key bindings in every application that I use as much as possible so that my hands stay on the keyboard without moving over to the right in order to get to the track ball. My eventual goal will be to turn off the track ball completely and just not have it on my desk. Just completely remove it from my desk and I never need it at all. That's my ultimate goal within the next six months. Now, what are the things that are going to be standing in my way? Well, like I said, in many applications, I already have it set up perfectly so that I can do this challenge without too much hardship at all. The browser, OBS, audacity, the file manager even, everywhere I have key binding set up. And all I have to do is kind of make those muscle memory because for the most part, I don't use them even though I have them set up because a lot of times I wanna move a file from one place to another in Crusader. It's just easier to drag it than it is to move around with the arrow keys or whatever and move it that way. So a lot of times I default to using the mouse even though I don't want to. So it's just going to be a matter of training myself to use the keyboard in those situations where I can and ignore the mouse. The situations where it's going to be a bigger problem are going to be twofold. First is going to be gaming. I don't do a ton of gaming. I tend to go in spurts. So I will game for like two or three weeks, like a lot. And then I'll go two or three months without gaming at all. You know, sometimes it takes ages for me to even open up Steam again. And my Steam deck at this moment right now has been in its case now again for over a month. Maybe next week I'll get the urge to game again and I'll use it all for a whole week and then I'll get bored with it and move on. So I don't do a lot of gaming but I still want to be able to do it. And that means I'm going to have to come up with a way to do so without the mouse, which I traditionally use in most games. So what I've done is I've bought a controller. Now I am not a controller guy. I never really have been. I have had consoles in the past but I've never been very good at it. So I will say that I'm not as good of a controller gamer as I am with the mouse and keyboard but it's time to learn this thing. This is a PS4 controller I think. I'm actually not up on the link. It's an off-brand PlayStation controller of some kind. And it works on Linux just fine. I've used it with Red Dead Redemption. I've used it with a couple other games and it works really good. I'm not as happy with having to connect it every time because it doesn't automatically connect, which is something I'm gonna have to look into. Maybe I'll have to script it or something using Blue Man. I'm not sure but that's something that I can do. That's not gonna be a big deal. I don't know how moving around Steam is going to work so well because I think in order to use the controller inside of the actual Steam interface you have to enable big picture mode and I'm not sure if I wanna do that. We'll see how that goes. So that's something I'm gonna have to figure out. I'm also assuming that Steam has some key bindings. I haven't actually looked to be honest with you. So if that is the case I can use the key bindings there as well because I can use the keyboard obviously. I just don't wanna use the mouse. Now one area, just kind of a tangent on this a little bit. This mouse here or this controller here has this touch pad in the center. So and it does work on Linux. If I had this connected I could actually use this to click buttons and scroll and stuff inside of any application that I want. So that'd be a cheat if I ever wanted to but I won't use that because it's really janky but it does work. I just thought that was funny and I'd point that out. So gaming is one area where I'm gonna have to kind of think on how to do it. Mostly it's gonna be using the controller. It's gonna be the Steam interface where I'm gonna have to kind of rejigger some things as they go along. So that's one area. The other one and it's the bigger one because I use it all the time is Kaden Live. Now Kaden Live does have a crap ton of key bindings that are available. I've just never used them and I don't know the extent that they're there. Now I know there's a ton of them but I don't know if there's ones that allow me to scrub along the timeline with the keyboard. I'm assuming that there probably are. I just have never really looked at it because it's just been always more useful to use the scroll wheel on the mouse in order to move along the timeline. So I'm assuming there are key bindings and I'm hoping that there are key bindings. If there are not key bindings then I'm gonna be in a lot more trouble because then I'm gonna have to use the mouse because there'd be no other way. I'm assuming that there are, if there are that's gonna be my biggest hurdle is kind of getting those key bindings in Kaden Live to work and learning them. So I use a few right now for cutting and splitting and all this stuff and removing blank space. I have a key bindings for that and I use a SZ and C in order to do all that kind of stuff and then X which is between another tool. So I have some things set up for key bindings. I just need to take it further. I think that Kaden Live is probably going to be the hardest one to get used to using just the keyboard. I don't know if it's gonna be 100% possible or not. That's why when I talked about the challenge at the beginning I said I wanna get rid of the mouse as much as I can in the next six months. The video editing is going to be the hardest hurdle I have to face, I think. Now I haven't made an attempt at any of that stuff yet. I've just decided to just kind of start doing this thing in today. So we'll see how that goes. Now the question that I'm probably going to get asked the most is why did you decide to do this? Well I've talked about this before in that other video but really what I wanna be able to do, so I have a very small desk. Like I wanna get a bigger desk but as of right now I have a very small desk and the keyboard and the mouse have to sit on this like keyboard tray or whatever that pulls out and it's not very big. It's one of the reasons why I don't have a full-size keyboard now. It's not the only reason. I don't like numpad so I don't need it. So I have a 75% keyboard and then I have the Elk. I'm huge that sits right on next to it. That takes up the whole keyboard tray and the keyboard is shifted over to the left so there's room for the mouse. It makes, and there's a wall here so I can't go any further that way and center myself with the keyboard so my hands when I'm typing go over to the left and that is not comfortable when I type. It's just really not. So a lot of times when I know I'm just gonna be in Vim I'll take the mouse, set it up on the desk so that it's out of the way and then move the keyboard so that it's centered and my wrists aren't in janky positions. But then when I do have to reach for the mouse I have to reach all the way up here and it's not an ideal situation. Now, obviously the solution is to get a bigger desk and that's on the list of things to do eventually but as of right now what I wanna be able to do is if I can just get rid of the mouse permanently my keyboard can sit in the center where it deserves and needs to be and that means no more odd wrist position. The challenge there of course is going to be I've gotten kind of used to my wrist being shoved over to the left a little bit and that's, you know, I've gotten really good typing that way it's gonna be weird having the keyboard right in the middle of the position it's gonna, I'm probably going to have to kind of retrain my fingers just a little bit as I type so it's gonna be a little bit of a challenge and I wanted to make this video to kind of hold myself accountable and actually get myself started because I've been putting it off for a while I think I said I've tried a few times over the course of the last two years since I made that last video and I think I've even actually blogged about this before so I've been trying over and over again but I'm getting better at challenges not still not great at challenges like I failed the six months challenge but I won the nano challenge I'm on another two year challenge and I'm still chugging away on that so I'm challenging myself to see if I can't make my workflow just a little bit better and this is a major one so if you're like me you're interested in a keyboard only workflow I challenge you to go alongside me with this and see if you can use your keyboard as much as possible without using the mouse I don't think that this is something that a lot of people are even interested in so we'll see how this goes but if you are interested in drop a comment in the comment section below and load here for me you can also join the Discord server and we have a challenges channel in the Discord server where we can talk about this as well and I know that's where I will be talking about this along with the two year Linux challenge which I'm currently also on so comments in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you you can follow me on Maserdawn or Odyssey links for those will be in the video description if you haven't already leave a like on this video I'd really appreciate it it really does help the channel you can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast links for PayPal and YouTube will be in the video description as well thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube because you're all absolutely amazing without you the challenges would not be anywhere near where it is right now so thank you so very very very very very much for your support I truly do appreciate it thanks everybody for watching I'll see you next time