Linux

Lot of great recommendations so far, but I will mention some of my favourites in case they were missed in the other comments: hyprland for a Wayland compositor / window manager, so you can easily set up keybinds for whatever you want, rofi for launching programs (and much more, I even made rofi-games so I can launch all my games from one place), and yazi for the file manager (use a lot of TUIs in general though).

You CAN go more extreme with the no mouse journey by using something like qutebrowser as your browser but I just use Firefox/librewolf with vimium c and find that's good enough for me.

You can launch steam games from terminal pretty easily.

Browsing can be done with Vimium on Firefox.

Just tackle the times you touch your mouse one issue at a time and you could try putting the mouse in a different room to create a small barrier between you and using it.

Completely, if you look at tiling window managers.

If you're a gnome user check out PaperWM as well as Search Light (which is like Spotlight or whatever its called on Mac).

And Vim really is that good. I started using it a few years back and I can't imagine using anything else. There's a bunch of Vim alternatives, like Helix or NeoVim if you want to explore.

Way back when we didn't have X we just lived in the CLI console, text mode, no bitmap buffer. Then, when X came up you used the rodent to point at xterm windows. If you're used to OS X, wait, MacOS, you're going to try recreating equivalent functionality on Linux, which seems a lot of work. Have you looked into adding a trackpad?

You can go a long way with a touchscreen, but the most annoying thing for me is that in Terminal, using touchscreen selects text instead of scrolling. Other than that, mouse is hardly necessary.

In the Linux world we have this great training routine called broken updates that forces users to regularly rediscover the magic of text mode. If you're lucky enough to run a specialized graphics card you get to experience this almost every update.

We have a similar program for training users how to cope without WiFi.

It's really easy to go mouseless on Linux/Unix. Just use as many TUI programs as possible since none of them will be mouse-oriented.

Also check out this list: https://github.com/erikw/vim-keybindings-everywhere-the-ultimate-list

A lot of people (myself included) like vim keybindings and want them in other programs, and of course using vim keybindings is inherently mouseless.

Off the top of my head, some software I use:

• river as my wayland compositor
• lf for a file browser
• imv for an image viewer
• Librewolf with Vimium-C to browse the web
• mpd + ncmpcpp for listening to music (you can also use cmus if you don't want to use mpd)

I don't use them, but you can also use something like Mutt, Neomutt, or Aerc for an email client, and use CLI bittorrent clients and password managers.

I have done a lot to make my environment nearly 100% mouseless. The only exception is gaming. You just need a mouse for most modern gaming.

That said, it requires a large amount of personal customization. If you edit files/code, look into Vim/Neovim. Heck, just learn Vim Key bindings. Sorry, not sorry, it's worth it.

Install vimium in your browser so you don't have to use a mouse nearly at all while browsing the internet. Learn how to use it.

IMHO a tiling window manager is a must if you want to make your setup as keyboard centric as possible. i3 is a good starter. I currently use BSPWM, but there's quite a few to choose from, and they all are roughly the same once you have your keyboard shortcuts in place. Make sure to combine it with an application launcher like dmenu or rofi. If you need a status bar like i3bar, use one (I personally go without).

Get very very familiar with the terminal. You'll know you're down the rabbit hole far enough when you can connect and troubleshoot a WiFi/Ethernet connection without using the mouse. Imho, you don't really need a file manager, though it's nice to have. I do have one on hand just in case, but just a terminal and the good ol' ls command is good enough for me.

Also look into ortholinear keyboards (acronym is OLKB) if you truly want to fly. Pricy investment, but your hands will thank you later, and once you are comfortable with that, the combination of an OLKB with a tiling window manager WILL make you fast.

I became obsessed with foregoing the mouse from 99% of my day to day use of my computer a couple of years ago and it is very very satisfying. Learning curve is high. But IMHO totally worth it.

Coming at this from an accessibility… is there any reason the tab, arrow, scape, escape and enter keys would not suffice?

Is it about efficiency? Are Linux GUI apps not expected to be keyboard-only accessible by default?

Don't run a window manager and you don't need a mouse at all. No problem.

Just don't start X and your problem is solved.