Two of my favorite Linux accesories

Here is a keyboard and mouse recommendation for Linux power users: The Sun Type 6 USB keyboard and the Logitech MX Revolution laser mouse.
 
As a long time Solaris user, I am completely addicted to the Sun Type 6 keyboard. There are two features to this keyboard that I absolutely needed when I moved to Linux at work a couple years ago.

First, I'm a big vim user. Vim is my number one power tool and I use it all day, every day. My biggest complaint of the Windows keyboard is that the Caps Lock and Control keys are in the wrong place. Some good Linux developers realized this and included control panels to swap them in several window managers including Gnome and KDE. However, the Sun Keyboard already comes with them in the correct places. Trust me, your left wrist will thank you for not spending eight hours contorted around, navigating text documents.

The second big advantage of the the Sun keyboard is that on the far left side is a set of shortcut keys. I suppose that they can all be mapped into useful actions, but the one that I really became addicted to is the Front key. Both Gnome and KDE support Window Actions that allow the windows to be cycled through so that the window that has mouse focus is brought to the top. If the window on top already has focus, then it will be moved to the bottom. This is mostly useful if you have enabled Focus Under Mouse.

You can find these keyboards on ebay by searching for 'sun "type 6" usb.' You shouldn't have any problem finding these in good shape for less that $15.

My other favorite accessory are the Logitech MX Revolution wireless laser mouse. These mice have a free spinning wheel that if nothing else is a lot of fun. Pressing down on the wheel releases index resistance similar to a normal mouse and allows the wheel to spin.

When you get a long web page, or have a really deep inbox, you can just flick the wheel and almost instantly, you are at the bottom. It is also a very impressive demo of the Compiz-Fusion cube. Because of the inertia of the wheel, the cube seems to spin forever with a slight flick of the wheel. The less expensive VX Revolution laptop mouse is also very nice, but the free spinning wheel is activated by a switch on the bottom.

There are some utilities that work with the MX Revolution to map all of its buttons. Revoco - http://goron.de/~froese/ - is a command line application and btnx is a gui tool that includes Revoco's functionality. It can be found at http://ollisalonen.com/btnx/index.html.

I admit that the MX Revolution is pretty expensive, but I found mine on sale at Frys. With a little work, you can probably get one of these for less than $50.