Gift ideas for 2025

We asked our community for their holiday gift ideas. We left this pretty open, such as a great mouse or keyboard, or an excellent book or TV series recommendation. Or a useful desktop accessory, or maybe a favorite pen or notebook for writing. Thanks for your answers! If you’re looking for a special gift for that hard-to-shop-for person in your life, this list should serve as great inspiration:

Don Watkins would share a Linux distribution:

Give your friends a USB drive with your favorite Linux distribution on it for live booting. I’ve installed Zorin OS on a spare laptop and tried it out, it’s a great distribution.

Victor R. Ruiz likes the Raspberry Pi 500+, which is built into a keyboard. From the website:

Raspberry Pi 500+ puts the power of Raspberry Pi 5’s quad-core 64-bit Arm processor and RP1 I/O controller into an ergonomic and tactile mechanical keyboard, combining uncompromising performance with 16GB RAM and 256GB NVMe storage for a truly premium desktop computer experience.

Raspberry Pi 500+ comes equipped with Gateron KS-33 Blue low-profile switches, which have long travel times and quick actuation for a comfortable and smooth typing experience. Want a more custom look? A keycap puller is included so that you can change the default keys.

David Both suggested a mechanical keyboard:

I think a Corsair mechanical keyboard makes a great gift. There are plenty of models to choose from, depending upon the usage. They can all be used for gaming or office applications, but the switch type will depend on the person and usage.

I like blue or brown keys for my work because they provide both audible and tactile feedback and have a bit of travel before they activate, along with some resistance. “Fast” keys are ultra-sensitive and I found that just resting my fingers on them can cause them to activate. That’s way too sensitive for me.

But having that choice is an important consideration.

I also like the Corsair keyboards because they’re amazingly resilient. I once dropped a very heavy object on my K70 RGB MK2 – Cherry MX Blue It was quite an impact and left a visible dent about 4 fingers wide around the JKL keys. Nothing was broken and everything still works as it should.

Also, the open source ckb-next software can be used to manage the RGB lighting and animation.

John Hall also recommends a keyboard:

I like the NovelKeys Classic TKL. It uses QMK firmware and is available in a variety of colors, but it is a barebones keyboard. You will need to provide your own stabilizers, switches, and keycaps.

Also the NovelKeys Classic Glo. It glows in the dark!

DefaultKevin suggests the Model F keyboard. From the website:

Bringing back the classic buckling spring and beam spring keyboards, built to last for decades but out of production since the 1980s, for a short production run ending soon!

At the heart of the Best Keyboard Ever, is IBM’s venerated buckling spring switch technology. This switch technology was developed in the 1970’s and is at the core of the IBM Model F. This retro keyboard switch has a delicate yet incredibly tactile response that makes typing a pure pleasure. If you are new to mechanical keyboards, the buckling spring switch is what other mechanical switches are modeled after and compared against (especially those blue and green switches!).

Seth Kenlon lists several useful accessories:

A USB hub. I don’t know about everybody else, but as peripherals slowly transition to USB-C, the more I realise I don’t have the right number of ports for all the things I want attached to my computer. A high quality USB hub with a variety of port options is a great gift.

Or a USB thumbdrive. I don’t store my data on the cloud unless it’s my own instance of Nextcloud, so a hefty USB thumbdrive is still my go-to storage solution. You can get a reliable drive of 64 GB for under $30 these days.

Maybe the geek in your life has embraced the cloud. In that case, why not gift them a Nextcloud One subscription? Nextcloud One is a hosted instance of the open source Nextcloud service, with storage and apps and lots of GDPR regulation (no stealing your data and using it to train AI here).

Tomo Lennox would buy a tech toy:

For men who I do not know well, I often find some kind of cool toy, like a quad-copter. Boys like toys even after they grow up, and there are lots of good deals on tech toys.

Adam likes the Evercade Alpha, a retro desktop arcade machine. From the website:

The Evercade Alpha is the first Evercade Compatible arcade machine. You can play any Evercade cartridges directly from the dual cartridge slot on the Alpha! Expand your game choice from a selection of over 60+ officially licensed physical cartridges and over 600 games! No downloads, no digital library. Expand to play even more arcade games, home console or home computer greats with zero setup or fuss. Just plug in and play.

Robin Bland likes pen and paper:

I still like writing notes by hand, and I love my fountain pen. If I were going to buy another pen right now, I’d buy the Lamy Safari 2025 Special Edition fountain pen because the Lamy has a great feel to it.

For paper, I don’t need a fancy notebook (although I’ll never say No). As long as it’s good paper that can take the ink, I’m happy. The Circa notebooks are great because they have refillable pages, so I can keep the same notebook and remove pages I don’t want, and add pages when I need more.

Jim Hall recommends his book:

Buy my book! Technical Writing for Developers is a great way to learn HTML and Markdown. Part of the “Pocket Guide” series, this is meant as a “how-to” guide for HTML, Markdown and other key technologies like JavaScript and GitHub for document markup and writing.

While the book is marketed for developers, anyone will find this book very useful as a quick-start guide to writing with HTML and Markdown. This is a great book for Technical Writers, Content Strategists, Product Managers and Marketers looking for how to get started with writing in a “Docs as Code” ecosystem.

This article is adapted from Your gift recommendations from our friends at Technically We Write, and is republished with permission.