Alternative Keyboard Layouts to QWERTY?

I liked the idea of Colemak, but it never became faster than QWERTY for me: https://colemak.com/

Dvorak seems interesting just older

I saw some people promote "Halmak" but it's a minority interest (may have been an attempt to tweak Colemak)

The Carpalx people have some exotic designs: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/

Of course going in a different direction is stenography, the open steno project: https://www.openstenoproject.org/

or the Characorder: https://www.charachorder.com/

Have you tried an alternative keyboard layout to QWERTY or an alternative to keyboard designs altogether with steno?