Do they make any that aren't designed for Minimalist? All of the ones I have seen have all of the extra keys, an office user needs, removed. And should I also assume that ergonomic form factors are out with this layout?
The noise from my keyboard is nothing in comparison to my office peers and everything else in my life. I really do not understand this. Ear plugs are far cheaper?
There's the
BFO keyboard which is a grid of 6 rows by 18 columns or 108 keys in total. That's enough to do a full sized keyboard without loosing any keys and having them mostly in the same place. But personally, one of the advantages of ortho is that the number row makes a lot more sense making it easier to use with it not being offset awkwardly. So I don't see any need for a num pad with an ortho keyboard. If all you do is enter numbers, then yeah, a numpad is useful. But I can enter in numbers plenty fast. And with plenty of keys to define a function layer, the function row keys can easily be placed on the number row where F2 = Fn+2 and so on. So yes, most ortho keyboards are smaller-er at least because once you get used to it, you find it's easier and makes sense to not have those extra keys.
But you don't have to jump right into a 40% Planck keyboard which maybe what a lot of people think about when they here ortho. I started with an Atomic keyboard which has 75 keys and is mostly like a 65% layout where you remove the function row and number pad but keep everything else. But once I got used to using layers for some some things, I found I didn't need that much and moved to a Preonic sized keyboard. I currently have 71 keys and that's enough to do everything I need. And my keyboard is balanced in that I have the same number of keys for both my left and right hand. Standard keyboard put a lot of extra stuff for the right had to do which tends to require moving around a lot instead of staying on home row.