would that yield the same? (i am not able to try it at the moment)

Not really - in part because /dev/input is a directory, and in part because I _believe_ reading from /dev/input consumes the event, which would be less than ideal for a silent keylogger. ;)

(/dev/input/XXXX also gives more structured output than just raw key events IIRC.)

You can actually read keypresses from /dev/input/eventN to make a keylogger, I wrote a simple one in lua.

I sit corrected, thank you.