this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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You will never get the same font rendering on Linux as on Windows as Windows font rendering (ClearType) is very strange, complicated and covered by patents.
Font rendering is also kind of a subjective thing. To anyone who is used macOS, windows font rendering looks wrong as well. Apple's font rendering renders fonts much closer to how they would look printed out. Windows tries to increase readability by reducing blurriness and aligning everything perfectly with pixels, but it does this at the expense of accuracy.
Linux's font rendering tends to be a bit behind, but is likely to be more similar to macOS than to Windows rendering as time goes forward. The fonts themselves are often made available by Microsoft for using on different systems, it's just the rendering that is different.
For me, on my screens just by installing Segoe UI and tweaking the hinting / antialiasing under GNOME settings makes it really close to what Windows delivers. The default Ubuntu font, Cantarell and Sans don't seem to be very good fonts for a great rendering experience.
The following links may be of interest to you:
Definitely very subjective. People keep saying macOS has amazing font rendering but for me it just looks like a blurry mess, especially on non-retina displays. My fonts are set to be as sharp as possible on Linux because when coding and in the terminal I want very sharp fonts so they're easier to read for me.
Seconding the dependence on the particular font as well. Cantarell, Ubuntu and OpenSans are all fairly blurry regardless, unless seen on HiDPI screens in which case they do look more like macOS. DejaVu Sans can be very sharp in contrast at very low resolutions because it's been made in the 800x600 and 1024x768 days and optimized to look sharp when small.
I gotta highly disagree with the blurry mess comment. To my eye Linux is looking about 90% as good as Mac these days. Mac fonts look the best but that os is worse in a lot of other ways. Windows always has looked worst font wise, though I will say it looks better these days than it used to.
Objectively, Apple is focusing on leveraging high DPI over subpixel tricks.
It makes sense that people who value sharpness on low DPI screens prefer subpixel rendering over grayscale.
I'm partial to macOS and I agree, I think Windows font rendering looks like garbage. On GNOME, I've found things to be okay. Sucks that patents are involved in this mess
Everyone believes what they look at every day “looks right”. It’s just habit.
Windows and Mac rendering have always been ugly as sin to me and I vastly prefer Linux font displays. They always look cleaner and less processed.
Thanks a lot for the info! I just went and installed segoe Ui font, and it looked even worse than Ubuntu Regular and I tried all the hinting options and made sure to restart after each change!!!