Yeah, this is very true. I tend to be super impatient, in general hehe. When I started realizing more and more that it will be a convenience in some areas - typing on my own computer - and a non-negligible inconvenience in others - colemak not existing on windows machines, aiways typing slowly on public keyboards - I got cold feet.
But I am taking your words to heart! Especially the parts about giving it more time and the solution of using a USB stick to carry the "keyboard" around with me. I'm a bit afraid of standing out as "that guy who insists on being so anal about his keyboard", but then again, I'm doing this for me and not anyone else. Also, if it's something that I enjoy, then I should do it regardless of it being a slight inconvenience :)

I've had two days off from practicing colemak, but now I feel a bit more optimistic again. Will try the pkl on a windows machine tomorrow and see if it feels like a quick and easy solution :)

I'm not sure about your motivations, but I'm using Colemak to satisfy my inner perfectionist. Qwerty is not optimal, I knew that for quite long time, but at that time I did not know how to get rid of qwerty. Colemak is probably not the best of the bests layout either, but qwerty sucks in each and every aspect compared to optimized layouts (except one - prevalence :) ).

There are not much research in the area because, again, this is a qwerty world, if some researches exist, they are based on qwerty.

For how long you use your own keyboard or laptop and for how long you use somebody's else or public one? For me the percentage is truly 99% to 1%. Should I learn and use something that I use 1% of my time behind the keyboard?

To leave all the problems with downloading and installing layout, as well as get freedom to experiment with your own keys placement that better works for you personally, I would recommend to use programmable keyboard. USB remapper essentially gives the same result. You will never need to worry about installing your layout at that guy computer.

Yeah, that was a major motivation for me, to have a feeling of having optimised some part of my life hehe. The thing is though, that I'm Swedish and thus write about 50/50 English and Swedish. Colemak may be optimised for English but it isn't for other languages. Also, having to reach for altgr whenever I need to type åäö which are three frequent letters in my language is not optimal.

My plan was to learn a new keyboard layout to type English with and stick with the Swedish qwerty layout for Swedish texts. But I'd like to be able to use the same layout for everything of course... So my new plan is to maybe create an optimal bilingual layout that is at least better than qwerty for both of these two languages. I see that this has been done very rigorously for German+English at adnw.de, but I can't find it for my two languages :)

So, for now I've left colemak behind and I'm looking forward to make something better for me. Will be sure to update with results if and when I have some results.

Thanks for all input, guys :)

Although Colemak is optimized for English, my understanding is it's still a lot better than Qwerty for pretty much all latin-script languages. Most European languages have similar sets of most frequent letters after all. The main issue is there are certain problematic bigrams that crop up in some languages. My knowledge of Swedish is limited to watching subtitled episodes of The Bridge, but I would still expect you should be better with Colemak, and make any minor adjustments/workarounds as necessary.

AltGr is very comfortable as a thumb key - especially if you use a "Wide" layout or nice keyboard - so I there wouldn't expect that to be a problem. I use AltGr as an extra shift key, and use it all the time for capital letters. It's very comfortable.

I used to jump between machines, worked in an office that used Apple's OS and another with Windows.  At home Linux.  So ended up choosing Dvorak as it has wider support.  But back then Colemak wasn't an option in OSX and is now.  There are small annoyances on Windows when switching layout.   And it can be a bit of an inconvenience.  I don't bother telling people unless I have to program at their workstation, at which point I'll switch layout.  And switch back after I'm done.

But in terms of optimising my programming, my keyboard layout is a small part of it.  Touch typing certainly helps.  But if you are after optimisations, there's probably better areas to focus.  Keyboard layers take my fancy, but anything non-standard is a pain for me.  A programmable keyboard with some degree of autonomy could help.

It did slip out down the pub, and a well respected programmer laughed all the alternative layouts off as junk.  Which appears to be the mindset for many.  Only those that have switched are likely to be supportive.  My partner said I wasted months learning a new layout.  But actually at the time I was crippled with RSI and I was hoping touch typing would be a way out for me.  And I'd read it easier to switch straight to Dvorak for a beginner (I'd been using Qwerty for years, so much of it was still baked in my brain somewhere).  However frustrating it felt at the time it's nice years after not really worrying about it.  I never did totally polish practice on the number row.  I found touch typing very uncomfortable to begin with compared with hunt and peck, which felt far more open.  But some RSI lifted from the shoulder and neck to strain in the hands.  And the latter evaporated in time as I got more and more used to the layout.  I still find I get pain from heavy key presses.  And chording - like shifting.  Sticky keys could help me there.

I picked up a cheap google assistant speaker.  And have been pretty wowed by the voice recognition.  I'm still hopeful the keyboard will fade away into complete obscurity.  I thought it would be well and truly gone by now when I started to learn to touch type.  But it's still hanging on in there, like Qwerty.

Or rather, in short, I certainly had doubts!  Go down the rabbit hole so far, and there's no escape.