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Had a few suggestions for X forwarding through SSH, going to put this here rather than reply to everyone individually: unfortunately there are two problems making that not an option for me.

1) I don't have the weird proprietary vga dongle for the Vaio P so I can't hook it to a monitor, limiting me to a tiny screen instead of my nice three monitor setup for my main PC

2) more importantly, the Vaio P is just frankly an *absurdly* weak computer. It was weak 15 years ago it's weaker now. It's fine for terminal stuff and lightweight apps running Linux but even through ssh -X it can't cope with looking at a web browser. If it was stronger I'd just use it as is but for my day to day stuff I really just need a way to borrow its keyboard

(I haven't had a chance to try out the suggestions here thus far btw but thanks for the replies people)

Like I am not trying to do this a specific way to be cute about technology it's a very concrete "if I can get this to work in this specific way it will make a big difference in my day to day computer use while I cope with this injury" thing, I feel bad when I have to shoot down people's ideas because in most normal scenarios they'd work just fine but in my current situation I can't really compromise on how I need this to work. For it to benefit me I have to have it work in this specific way with this specific hardware even if that makes finding a solution way less fun.

I probably didn't even need to add all of this I just worry I come off as difficult when I reply to a bunch of people with "no that won't work", but I want to just make it clear that it's because this situation is what's difficult and I can't get around it easily lol. This is the only device I have with a keyboard that would make things easier for me and unfortunately it's a device that makes this whole thing harder with its limitations. The Vaio P is more of a fun oddity or decent terminal only machine in 2025, but if I could use its keyboard on a PC that isn't 15 years old and sucked ass 15 years ago too, it would be super helpful for me right now.

@mav I saw someone who gutted their Vaio P and put a Pi in it but I wouldn't have the heart to do that unless I had a broken one. I'm not willing to tear up a perfectly good one lol. But god I'd love that because most Pis these days have better specs than this thing. Honestly the Vaio P was a pretty shitty laptop at the time especially for the price, but that's because it was offering a form factor that barely existed anywhere else so sacrifices had to be made. It's a lot more palatable as a retro tech oddity now that you aren't expecting to watch Netflix on. It runs lightweight Linux distros perfectly fine as long as you know its limitations. But the fact it's 32bit does mean some stuff you'd want to run you're just screwed on.

@mav I'm still extremely mad that GPD is dedicated to the keyboard layout they're using. I have a P2 Max and it would be the ideal laptop for me if it had a Vaio P keyboard. But I can't get anything done on a laptop whose keyboard requires me to use Fn commands just to type an underscore or colon. I'm not relearning how to type at this point I need the keys where they belong!!

@lori I get you.

I dream of buying an MNT Pocket Reform but just can't justify it yet, it's such a ridiculous luxury item for something I could spend far less and get far more with, but... when/if PR2 comes out, I may just do it.