[danieka]

I also went cold turkey a couple of years ago. The reason for me was that I experienced pain in my fingers after typing. After a day at work I was guaranteed to be in pain. At the time my productivity plummeted and it took me maybe two months to get to a level where I wasn't constantly frustrated.

That said, I've never regretted the switch. Even though I still feel pain sometimes when using a laptop keyboard the pain is mostly gone. Other benefits include that I've properly learned how to type and I am able to type without looking at the keyboard, something I could never do using QWERTY. I don't know if I write faster, but since the pain is gone I'm satisfied.

I suggest you stick with it. It will get easier and you won't regret it.

This site is great for practicing: https://learn.dvorak.nl

[giblet]

With programming/shell using Dvorak I experienced pain noticed most in pinky-heavy commands (e.g. ls<RETURN>).

I now map right alt to return and that's helped:

   xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

in ~/.Xmodmap:

    ! 108 = Right Alt
    keycode 108 = Return

[aliceyhg]

Thank you. Mild wrist pains is what motivated me to start in the first place, will stick with it.

[danieka]

I'm hardly an ergonomics expert, quite the opposite :) But if you feel pain in your wrists it might be related to other things like posture. I always get quite intense pain when writing on a laptop keyboard so I bought Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard, it's been a great boon to me.