5 ms·

He sounded pretty serious to me. Do you have a better suggestion? The Mavis Beacon software does a perfectly fine job at teaching touch-typing.

SkyMarshal 15y ago
Ktouch is awesome, Free, and in the Deb repo's, maybe others. Simple, effective, nice UI, and you can learn any layout from Qwerty to Colemak.
- mpyne 15y ago
  Like Miguel de Icaza would ever recommend a KDE application. ;)
- bad_user 15y ago
  I learned with KTouch, and it is awesome. Unfortunately when I did so, it didn't have special lessons for the numeric keys; hope that changed.
ginkgo 15y ago
When I forced myself to learn touch-typing with a qwerty keyboard i used gtypist. I found it to be sufficient for its purpose. The only gripe i had with it was that it required typing two spaces after a period. I found this just plain weird, so I fixed it in the tutorial files. I guess using a blank keyboard also helped quite a bit..
- okal 15y ago
  Sorry, hadn't seen your comment. Gtypist did a lot for my muscle memory, yet I barely scraped the surface. It's probably time I went through the remaining tutorials.
okal 15y ago
GNU gtypist. Got me from "hunt and peck" to touch typing with a decent wpm count within 2 weeks. Considering I used fewer than half of the tutorials, I think that's pretty awesome. It's an old GNU utility so it should be in any repos. Even had it on Cygwin.
- angus77 15y ago
  That's exactly how I learned---I'd say it took me two weeks, to, to become comfortable with typing. I've been recommending learning to touch type that way for a few years now. Not a soul has taken me up on it yet.
- shawndumas 15y ago
  http://www.gnu.org/s/gtypist/ http://www.gnu.org/s/gtypist/ has a win32 version
sherr 15y ago
Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is pretty good - Linux and OSX. http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/ http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/
- mmavnn 15y ago
  Just tried it: nicely done especially as I use a slightly customised UK Dvorak keyboard.
jeza 15y ago
I used some random type tutor software in high school (sometime in the mid-late 90s), though only spent enough time with it to learn the home keys. I would then look at the keyboard for the remainder of the keys. Initially that was probably no faster than my old hunt and peck method. I remember remarking at one stage that I was looking at the keyboard out of habit. Then one day I noticed that I was no longer looking at all. I'm sure it was a strange feeling at the time! Goes to show you don't really need to learn the whole process with some type tutor software. Though in terms of efficiency you may want to be aware of what they suggest. For instance, I think I was hitting the Y key with my left hand rather than right hand at some stage, but long ago changed that.
mvalle 15y ago
In an article called "Learning Unix", I think recommending (I assume proprietary) Windows/Mac software, is a bit silly.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Unix is just a bunch of standards that a couple of OSes are implementing, including OS X, not something that adheres to any philosophy about how software should be distributed.
  - mvalle 15y ago
    The point is that the "couple of OSes" does not include Windows 7 / Vista / XP.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

Ktouch is awesome, Free, and in the Deb repo's, maybe others. Simple, effective, nice UI, and you can learn any layout from Qwerty to Colemak.

mpyne 15y ago
Like Miguel de Icaza would ever recommend a KDE application. ;)
bad_user 15y ago
I learned with KTouch, and it is awesome. Unfortunately when I did so, it didn't have special lessons for the numeric keys; hope that changed.

ginkgo 15y ago

When I forced myself to learn touch-typing with a qwerty keyboard i used gtypist. I found it to be sufficient for its purpose. The only gripe i had with it was that it required typing two spaces after a period. I found this just plain weird, so I fixed it in the tutorial files. I guess using a blank keyboard also helped quite a bit..

okal 15y ago
Sorry, hadn't seen your comment. Gtypist did a lot for my muscle memory, yet I barely scraped the surface. It's probably time I went through the remaining tutorials.

okal 15y ago

GNU gtypist. Got me from "hunt and peck" to touch typing with a decent wpm count within 2 weeks. Considering I used fewer than half of the tutorials, I think that's pretty awesome. It's an old GNU utility so it should be in any repos. Even had it on Cygwin.

angus77 15y ago
That's exactly how I learned---I'd say it took me two weeks, to, to become comfortable with typing. I've been recommending learning to touch type that way for a few years now. Not a soul has taken me up on it yet.
shawndumas 15y ago
http://www.gnu.org/s/gtypist/ http://www.gnu.org/s/gtypist/ has a win32 version

sherr 15y ago

Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is pretty good - Linux and OSX. http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/ http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/

mmavnn 15y ago
Just tried it: nicely done especially as I use a slightly customised UK Dvorak keyboard.

jeza 15y ago

I used some random type tutor software in high school (sometime in the mid-late 90s), though only spent enough time with it to learn the home keys. I would then look at the keyboard for the remainder of the keys. Initially that was probably no faster than my old hunt and peck method. I remember remarking at one stage that I was looking at the keyboard out of habit. Then one day I noticed that I was no longer looking at all. I'm sure it was a strange feeling at the time! Goes to show you don't really need to learn the whole process with some type tutor software. Though in terms of efficiency you may want to be aware of what they suggest. For instance, I think I was hitting the Y key with my left hand rather than right hand at some stage, but long ago changed that.

mvalle 15y ago

In an article called "Learning Unix", I think recommending (I assume proprietary) Windows/Mac software, is a bit silly.

bad_user 15y ago
Unix is just a bunch of standards that a couple of OSes are implementing, including OS X, not something that adheres to any philosophy about how software should be distributed.
- mvalle 15y ago
  The point is that the "couple of OSes" does not include Windows 7 / Vista / XP.