Questions for anyone who has used Sun Type 7 keyboards [closed]

So I noticed that Oracle is still selling Sun Type 7 keyboard and mouse packages. I was thinking of buying one for a Linux box at my house so I had easy access to some of the extra keys such as Compose and Alt-GR. I have some questions though before I do for anyone who has used these -- it's been a very long time since I've used an actual Sun keyboard.

  1. They show that both a PC and UNIX layout is available. Unfortunately, I cannot find anywhere a clear picture of both layouts to determine the difference. Can anyone post pictures of the 2 different layouts for me to take a look at?

  2. I don't remember what some of the "Solaris shortcut" keys do, like Props, Front, Stop, and Again. Are these vestiges from OpenWindows? Do they have any usage on a modern Solaris like OpenSolaris running Gnome? Do they automatically map to anything useful on Linux, or am I going to have to map them myself to something with XModMap?

  3. When I last used a Sun keyboard, I remember it having a rather mushy feel to it, so I am wondering if any touch typists could weigh in on whether this keyboard "feels nice" for day to day touch typing.

Thanks!


I'll go ahead and answer question #1 myself, as I finally located some crude layouts for the Sun keyboards.

U.S. PC Keyboard Layout

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U.S. UNIX Layout

enter image description here

Per the page I found these on, these are accurate up to Type 5c. I'd still like a picture of the two if someone else could supply that.


I am a touch typist and use the Sun Type 7 keyboard at work. The keys don't have a mushy feel, they are quite responsive and have a soft feel to it. Also the plastic used, I believe, is soft touch, so it feels nice to touch.