HOLY SHIT Linux font rendering is ass

https://pandasauce.org/post/linux-fonts/

>>106016520 (OP)
It's better than OSX these days.

Skill issue on your part

>>106016520 (OP)
yeah its not great. hit the arch wiki im sure theres probably a way to make it better

>>106016593
im on mint

Not my problem I'm blind enough so this doesn't affect me
Healthy eyestards are eternal copers

>>106016614
biggest coper itt award

>>106016520 (OP)
It really is fucking horrible, I can't stand it.

I've never thought about font rendering in my life. What should I even be looking for?
>>106016606
Arch is the final destination for Linux tinkery, so whatever you find on the wiki will most likely apply to other distros. I'm on Debian but I use it all the time.

>>106016520 (OP)
>she doesn't exclusively use bitmap fonts

>>106016647
Seethe some more healthynigger. Oh woah there are you ok? Too dizzy after reading my poorly rendered text?

just use a proper font

>>106016692
this isnt linux

>>106016694
wrong

>>106016687
i actually do have dizziness issues funny enough, for like a year now
>>106016668
ok

>>106016706
i will check it out

>>106016793
anon has a tumor

>>106016793
Is the dizziness because of the font issue or a health problem? If the second I hope you can solve it in the future
Still ur a sane eyes fag

>>106016822
i have some theories, vit deficiency, inner ear, etc, gonna finally see a doc soon tho, but thanks

>>106017053
>tracking png
Why?

>>106017060
comparing my font setup. why not?

>>106017072
Oh it's a different image and you are not that webm anon. Sorry, my paranoia confused stuff, keep going... What's your fav font

>>106017097
ibm plex for gui apps

>>106016520 (OP)
true, cue the freetard cope, it's not even the rendering, ALL freetard made fonts are trash, only way to make troonix usable is to install macos fonts

>>106016684
This anon gets it. You are using a computer, not reading your sister's diary.

>>106016520 (OP)
Try the more-dakka approach
Get a monitor that looks good at 200% zoom

>>106016706
Segoe on Linux is cheating
Use Inter or something that doesn’t involve violating a EULA to use

>>106016520 (OP)
looks good to me

>>106016520 (OP)
Skill issue. All my fonts look crisp

>>106017412
nta but you made me look into it.
lol
lmao

is this considered bad?

>>106016520 (OP)
Looks better than Cleartype to me (27" 1440p IPS screen at 1m distance). Have you done basic configuration (hinting style, subpixel rendering, subpixel layout, antialiasing) and picked and installed a font family you like?
Freetype is the best font renderer out there for the typical low PPI desktop screen, when configured properly. Cleartype, too, has a configuration tool and it looks like crap out of the box imo.
All font renderers look mostly the same at 50pt and zooming into screenshots to nitpick is retarded because the rendering algorithm is made to take advantage of panel layout.

Noto Sans just works

>>106017587
How did you make it look like that?

>>106017968
retards like that will never tell you because they either use some overlycomplicated hack that only works in the browsers or they applies post processing to the picture

>>106016520 (OP)
>set your garbage up wrong
>it looks bad
You're just tech stupid, it's OK to admit it jeet.

>>106016520 (OP)
can other OS than windows also get proper and SHARP fontrendering done? basically turn off cleartype blurring bullcrap completely off? i hate that stuff, it ruins your eyes

i want perfectly sharp and precise fonts, everything else is unacceptable for ongoing interaction

>>106016520 (OP)
getting an oled monitor gave me aids xd

>I don't know how to configure fontconfig
Many such cases.

>>106020837
basically ARIAL for websites and TAHOMA for the OS and a raster-font for the commandline

i would really love to see a way to make linux have fonts perfectly sharp, same as android
played around with it for some time but never found success, linux uses fucked up fonts that look even weirder with blurring disabled or does not have an option i could find to disable font-blur
oh well... ended up running linux as virtual machine on windows for serverpurposes to get around the blurry font horrors

>>106016520 (OP)
I always thought it was better than on Windows. Every once in a while that I use Windows I really don't like the font rendering but it could be a matter of taste too

>>106020860
I want to add, unless you're a plebby bitch, you also need to know how to fuck with cleartype and the different apps that do other shit themselves, like windows terminal. Font configuration is ass on every platform sans fagOS, but fagOS on low PPI is also the worst of all of them.

>>106017968
system (X11) font settings
Xft.dpi: 192
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight

browser font is "IBM Plex Sans" without letting pages set their own font.
terminal font is "Fira Mono" with medium weight.
none of this is special or involved in any way.
for completeness, "layout.css.devPixelsPerPx" is set to 1.5 in "about:config". but that shouldn't be relevant. i just set far from my monitor sometimes and need the "zoom" in the browser UI itself (without fucking with anything else).
>>106020053
>they applies post processing to the picture
you win the jeetiest comment of the day. you can receive your prize from the nearest public shitter.

No issues on tumbleweed with KDE

>>106016520 (OP)
I use an oled display so it's going to be shit regardless of the OS

>>106020837
>>106020873


on windows since vista with introduction of segoe-bullshit-font it went downhill. on XP and before everything was fine, you just had to disable "cleartype" - which i still think is a coordinated effort to make peoples eyes worse

when i had my nephew over he was like UNCLE WHY IS THE IMAGE ON YOUR COMPUTER SO CRYSTAL CLEAR AND SHARP
turned out he meant the fonts as my brother has everything on default which means blurred fonts and otherwise only knows mobile phone bullshit with high dpi and then upscaled font (yeah, waste that real estate, go ahead)
lol. kids know whats good by instinct


The Chad perfect and actually clear font

the virgin blurred eyecancer-gibberish

NOT ClearType

>>106017766
Was on the segoe or whatever the defaults are called, changed it to ubuntu last night, that was somewhat better

>>106020979
Cope, xp was ass

>loonix anons opening random websites and zooming in 300% saying "this is my typical font render" as if we wouldnt notice

>>106016520 (OP)
Works on my machine.

>>106021829
if you knew how to harden it and run it with an host intrusion prevention system it was the best OS at its time and long after. used it until 2018 for everything when i got a new graphics card wich had no drivers for older than win 7, went for w10 then with all espionage and foreign interest bullshit disabled and a properly configured firewall (only browser & email can access the internet)

/etc/environment

QML_DISABLE_DISTANCEFIELD=1

>>106022684
wasnt talking about the whole os, just fonts

>>106016520 (OP)
looks fine to me

>>106026774
Too fuzzy

>>106016520 (OP)
genuine question why is this?
like the linux project created a whole fucking competing operating system, how are they unable to have good font rendering? is it a patent thing? i heard windows has a patent on some kind of font rasterization technique

>>106016520 (OP)
works on my Android

>>106020907
Thanks for this. Everything looks better now.

>>106029227
It was a patent thing 20 years ago
Microsoft had patents on font hinting (getting pixel-accurate placement from TrueType fonts)

>>106017968
xterm*faceName: Nimbus Mono PS
xterm*faceSize4: 20
in my xrdb.

>>106016520 (OP)
I hope you and your entire family dies in worst way possible. By torture and fire

> wintards never explaining what they mean by bad font rendering besides muh xp
Pixel fonts exist
Troll thread

>>106030722
What the fuck is wrong with you

>>106020961
why?

>>106030722
it costs nothing to be nice you fucking nigger, now give him a suggestion on how to fix his font rendering as an apology

>>106031683
Cant relate, been a shut in since 2020

>>106017412
>Segoe on Linux is cheating
Importing Indians en masse is also cheating. Fuck MS and their rules.

what prevents people from uploading paid fonts for free? it's just a few kb big file.

>>106016520 (OP)
well there is an easy solution just like with everything in linux: use an unstable crutch that takes 4 hours of anal rape to setup correctly and stop being such a whiny, grass touching, life having normalnigger lul

>>106016520 (OP)
Oh SHIT

>>106016520 (OP)
configure your fontconfig and subpixel rendering according to your monitor
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_configuration

>winniggers still coping

>>106016520 (OP)
it's alright

I genuinely have no idea what good font rendering is supposed to look like, but here's mine. Is this good or bad?

>>106032843
>valvedrone
>chinkshit slop vidya
>showcases two instances of google chrome
>this is the best <use os> elitist argument i've got up my sleeve, yes
>NIGGER
Pathetic

>>106033020
It depends on how it looks on your monitor. If someone has a different type of screen technology, they will see it differently to you.

>>106020961
In windows you need to set Pixel structure to 0
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/advanced/cleartype-registry-settings

There is a GUI tool as well.

>>106022810
what does this do

>>106020837
>>106020837
The bitmap rendering of Georgia is superior than Ari*l, Segoe or any other subpar font that looks like shit. Its placement of every single pixel is intelligently positioned, nothing is wasted, cluttered or out of proportion. The traditional serifs are retained for better shape recognitions and appeal while still remains easy to comprehend and compact. The x-height is massive in comparison with anything else, providing better visibility afar in low resolution screens. It is aesthetically pleasing, friendly to the eyes, sophisticated and elegant, doing the impossible by still preserving serifs even at 11px. Georgia stands as the absolute perfect arrangement out of all possible positions in a 7x11 bitmaps grid, every single font from 9px to 15px scale should automatically default to the sequences of pixels currently displaying, it's a solved solution, everything else is inferior to its morphology:

Arial is a cluttered and terribly designed mess, being of the soulless sans-serif type means nothing prevents pixels from literally being separated by just a hair and bunching up at bitmap level. Uneven spots ravage the type like ink spills, drawing attention to themselves by being distinctly noisier than the rest of the text. Every single documents, paragraphs and messages unlucky enough to be rendered in it are doomed to be forever distracting to read. The bleeding occurs most frequently in the sequences: gg it tt, lt or ll and many more, 15% in English. The kerning is also shit, letters literally touch each other frequently. Times News Roman is also terrible, shapes are passable but its kerning is utter garbage and ruins anything good about it at bitmap level. Tahoma and a few others are the only ones that render accordingly with nothing touching each other, but theyre soulless sans-serifs and somehow waste more space than serif Georgia. The only gripe against it is that few of the full Latin table is missing, but nothing else. Switch to Georgia

>needing to worry about font rendering in 2000+25

how did linux sisters get mind broken this bad?

>>106016520 (OP)
https://blog.aktsbot.in/no-more-blurry-fonts.html

>>106016520 (OP)
i had to dial it in to make it look acceptable, it looked off to me too out of the box
fuck around with your font settings:
>anti-aliasing: probably want it on unless you're going for a classic look or use really small fonts
>sub-pixel: RGB if LCD, none if OLED
>hinting: lower = blurry but smooth (macOS-like), higher = sharper but might look off on small fonts (windows-like)
and ofc pick a good system font that supports proper hinting (TTF), i like IBM Plex Sans personally

>>106036717
also i found out i had DPI scaling at 110% on my second monitor by accident and for some reason it was making my fonts look weird on either monitor, resetting both monitors to 100% helped

alright, linux font rendering CAN be fixed. but why aren't the fixed settings the DEFAULT?

>>106031556
> wintards never explaining what they mean by bad font rendering besides muh xp
its blurred artificially. problem exists on every "modern" os
xp was the last os with this not enabled by default thus for the average user the last good os in this case


>Pixel fonts exist
so, you can have crisp fonts like in the images posted above with linux?
mind showing me? would love to see it
disabled fonthinting / cleartype whatever the bur-bullshit is called for everything,
tahoma 8 point for os and
arial 8 point for firefox rendering websites

also everything at 96 DPI

>>106029227
>>106030517
i think this is poor decisionmaking mainly

>>106031683
based haver of minimum empathy

>>106031709
> shut in since 2020
shutin since 2010 99% of time, still no excuse for behaving like a nigger

>>106017412
>segoe
bad font as its not sharp without blur, its main task is make people do not turn off the font-blur

>>106031717
based

>>106031850
nothing
same as nothing stops you from extracting them yourself

>>106032425
if you are fed up you can just use it "as is", it works although not pretty
same on windows though
in 2025 there is no os with proper fontrendering by default known to me
last one was windows xp and all win before

>>106032777
> subpixel rendering
this is cancer and the source for all problems

>>106032843
just enlarge the line...?

>>106032877
blurry. not ok

>>106033020
blury. bad. look at my examples aboe to see proper rendering, for example the mee with chad and virgin

>>106033134
press windowskey +pause
extended system settings
perforance (click settings)
uncheck softening edges or whatever its called in english, in german it says "kanten der bildschirmschriftarten verfeinern"
if you have segoe font everything will look shitty now
change all fonts in system to tahoma 8 point as it should be (either per registry or with windows font changer tool)
????
profit

its scandalous the jeets at microsoft removed the normal gui settings to change fonts in windows! the thing many criticise in linux - the need to change so much to have it properly - its in windows the same!

>>106036534
you have a nice and sharp font, good, however i dont like serifs as they reduce readability and look less plain
>detailed infos
thanks for your in depth explaination though
>Switch to Georgia
will stay at arial 8pt for firefox, i dont like serifs

also for notepad i like "fixedsys"

>>106036615
still unsharp due to subpixelrendering. this has to be off

>>106036738
yes dpi scaling is cancer
always use 96dpi at 100%

>>106037079
likely those who set the defaults have bad eyes
same at microsoft

>>106016520 (OP)
yes. troonixoids will argue it's how it's supposed to be and that the blur is much more readable and healthier on your eyes

>>106036534
ariel is superb font but it's not to be used for much reading, it's purpose is to be readable enough while condensing as much information into designated space.

if you don't give a fuck about space just use verdana it's superior to everything on the planet anyway

>>106037079
>>106038168
Defaults need to work on everything. Fixing it requires interrogating the user. People who care for that read the docs and configure the font rendering themselves. People who don't care accept the defaults.

If you don't like it add a screen to the install wizard for your favorite distro. I'm sure they'd be happy to merge your PR.

>>106038100
>so, you can have crisp fonts like in the images posted above with linux?
Yes. Disable antialising and XT apps and probably others will render like that. I'm pretty sure Xterm does by default unless you explicitly specify a vector font in your xdefaults.

Gnome probably won't but Gnome has specifically decided they like the UI being unreadable for a number of reasons. Don't use gnome, every part of it is completely fucked.

>>106038412
subpixel order varies, but the rest is usually the same.

>>106016687
Fucking based.

>>106016520 (OP)
Before wasting time debating this, can you confirm that you're using a decent monitor with enough pixel density to have any hope of actually displaying text well?
For example, a 1080p 23" monitor (96ppi) or a 2560x1440 27" (109ppi) are both grossly inadequate, and nobody who cares about nice text should be using them. As a rule, if your system-wide scaling is set to 100%, you're pretty much fucked regardless of platform.
Windows does do a slightly better job at making these displays semi-usable than other platforms, but it's definitely a lipstick-on-pig situation.

You want something like 4K at 23" (191ppi) with 200% scaling. At a bare minimum you might get away with something like 4K at 32" (137ppi) with 125% scaling.

>>106038672
>it's your monitor
yeah, let's just just project it on a 15mile canvas stretched between two mountains because troonix can't render for shit

>>106038672
75 DPI was plenty even before SPAA was common.

>>106038731
If you absolutely must use a 96ppi piece of shit, then I accept and agree that Windows is your best bet for making the best of a bad situation.
If your screen is fit-for-purpose then you'll probably find that Windows, macOS, and all major Linux distros all work just fine.
(On Linux there used to be some caveats involving fractional scaling, but with recent versions of KDE on Wayland that all seems to be solved.)

>>106038745
It was never plenty, we just accepted it because better monitors weren't available or were unreasonably expensive.

>>106038100
i dont behave like a nigger tho?

wow, this thread lives
>>106038672
14 inch laptop 1080p, 150 scaling on windows.

>>106038672
I use a 109ppi screen and windows looks fine. It's not great, if I get too close to the screen I can see heavy pixelation which isn't the case on my basic mid range smartphone, but from a normal viewing distance it looks good enough. My issue with this whole thing is why can't fucking Linux just copy windows? Like why isn't there a way for me to just go to github, run some script and have my fonts look exactly like in Windows? Why complicate it? I don't care if it's "technically" more accurate on linux, I care about it just working on my "shit" screen. I'm not throwing away my perfectly usable monitor to updooooooooooot to a 4K screen that like 5% of pop uses to use linux. This is generally why I hate black/white autists, I'm not calling you that, you seem like a good and normal guy. But most linux people I interact with just constantly deny the linux text/font rendering issues or even say they look better. Which is just fucking not the case for an average desktop PC. I'm not gonna go into autistic minutea about technological accuracy or it being meant for hdpi screens, I don't care about that. I care about it looking good on my average screen that most people use. It's like autists shitting on cheap wine or beer or shitty cheese or fast food, nobody wants to have some autistic FREAK yap in their fucking ear when the the little ceasars pizza feels so fucking tasty and good when you dont got a fucking FREAK yapping in your ear about how its not healthy or how its slop or how its not made properly. FUCK YOU

>>106017419
>>looks good to me
>screenshot is disgustingly bad
>the kerning on the right side menu looks outright buggy
get your eyes tested anon