12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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Debian Ubuntu By Silver Moon On May 17, 2013 37 Comments

How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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Fonts on LinuxFonts on linux have long been an issue due to various reasons like the BCI patent by Apple, lack of freequality fonts etc. However over time things have changed and now its possible to get your linux systemfonts look as good as, or even better than a mac or windows 8 as far as fonts are concerned. In this post Iam going to show you couple of simple tricks that can make the fonts of your linux system look amazing!!

However first there are a couple of things to know about how the tricks work. We are mainly going to do 2things. First is, get better fonts for the system. Second, we are going to tweak the ".fonts.conf" file in thehome directory. The ".fonts.conf" file allows a user to override the system font settings like antialiasing,hinting, auto-hinting, sub pixel rendering etc.

The tweaks shown in the post should give identical font rendering on any linux distro provided that BCIhinting (Byte code interpreter) is available (which it is on most modern linux distros since the bci patenthas now expired).

Step 1 - Get better fontsOk, so the first step is to get better fonts for our system. All of these fonts are free and available from thegoogle webfont store at the following url

http://www.google.com/fonts/Here is a list of the fonts you shall need.

1. Droid Sans 2. Droid Sans Mono 3. Droid Serif

4. Noto Sans 5. Noto Serif

6. Open Sans

Download the font files. Google would give all of them in a single zip file. Make sure you download allstyles and all encodings.

Once downloaded, extract them in the following directory.

/usr/share/fonts

And they would get installed.

Step 2 - Tweak your .fonts.confThe next step is to tweak the font rendering through the .fonts.conf file. This file exists in your homedirectory. In newer versions of ubuntu, if this file is not already there, then create one. The file is in xmlformat, and through its syntax we can define various settings on per font basis. Like replace a font byanother, use autohinting for a certain font, don't use for another and so on.

So copy the xml from the following url to your .fonts.conf file

https://gist.github.com/silv3rm00n/5599072If you already have a fonts.conf file then take a backup first. Later if you decide to revert,

Make sure you installed the fonts mentioned in the previous step. After this you need to configure few fontsettings in kde/gnome, firefox and google chrome. Move on to the next section or continue reading toknow more about the fonts.conf tweaks.

Some backgroundThe ubuntu wiki page on fonts has a font configuration xml provided by Obi Bok. It focuses on gettingwindows xp style clear looking fonts on your linux system with microsoft fonts. For this you need to installthe microsoft fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia, Times New Roman etc.

On Ubuntu the fonts are available in the repository by the package name ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Byinstalling those fonts, and putting the xml setting in your fonts.conf file your fonts should look like that ofwindows xp. Infact they would look better than windows XP.

Those microsoft fonts might work well for you, but I think they are out dated and its time to get some

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12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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modern fonts. So I modified the original fonts.conf by Obi Bok to suit more to Droid, Noto and Open Sans font families.You will see the results in a short while.

Step 3 - Configure font settingsNow we shall be configuring the desktop (KDE or GNOME) and the web (Firefox or Chrome) to get betterfont renderings according to our plan.

Configure system fonts - KDEOn KDE, launch System Settings, go to "Common Appearance and Behaviour > Application appearance >Fonts". Select "Droid Sans" size 9 for all fonts. For "fixed width" font select "Droid Sans Mono" size 9.

In "Use anti-aliasing" dropdown, select "System Settings". Leave force font dpi unchecked.

On KDE the subpixel rendering cannot be enabled from the .fonts.conf file. Adding the following will haveno effect

Hence it has to enabled from the Font settings box.

The subpixel rendering setting for kde is stored in the file "~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals" in a fieldnamed "XftSubPixel=rgb".

Thats it. That should make your fonts look better. Try logging out and relogin, if the settings don't takeeffect properly.

12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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GnomeThe newer gnome desktops dont have a direct option to change the fonts. Use a tool like gnome-tweak-tool and change the fonts.

Gnome with the default Ubuntu Font at size 11pt.

Gnome with tweaked Droid Fonts at size 10pt.

12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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Configure web fonts - Chrome/FirefoxNow open the browsers google chrome and firefox and go to font settings area. And use the followingsettings

Standard Font - Sans Serif Font - Serif Sans-serif font - Sans Fixed-width font - monospace

Minimum font-size - 11px

Chrome

Firefox

That much is enough for configuring the browsers.

Final ResultsThe dialog boxes shown above already show the final rendering of the fonts on the desktop. Now I amputting up some screenshots of how the fonts look on webpages.

Here is quick comparison between our font tweaked google chrome on linux and Google chrome withdefault fonts on windows 8.

Ubuntu default - ChromeOn a fresh installation of Ubuntu 12.10, google chrome shows google.com like this

12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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Ubuntu TWEAKED - ChromeHere is the same result with our font tweaks applied. The fonts look rich and well fed.

Windows 8 - ChromeAnd for some comparison take a look at how Windows 8 looks

It should be easy to spot out right away how rich the fonts on ubuntu look, when compared to windows 8. Ihave not checked with mac. May be you should try that and let me know the results.

MonospaceFor monospace we have 2 great choices. Droid Sans Mono and Inconsolata. However each has got issues.

1. Droid Sans Mono does not have a Bold version. So making them bold looks ugly on webpages.Inconsolata has got a bold version.

2. Inconsolata is smaller in size than Droid Sans Mono. So at the same size of 9pt or 12px Inconsolata looksmuch tinier than Droid Sans.

3. Comparatively Droid Mono is clearer than Inconsolata.

Here is a screenshot of how each looks on KDE with full hinting.

Droid Mono at 9pt

12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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Inconsolata at 10pt

So Inconsolata at 10pt looks like Droid Mono at 9pt. Also note that Droid Mono looks nicer thanInconsolata. Both are at full hinting with autohinting disabled.

Droid Mono vs Ubuntu MonoDroid Mono at 9.5pt in Konsole/KDE with full hinting

Ubuntu Mono at 11pt in Konsole/KDE with slight hinting

12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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What tweaks have been doneNow I shall explain the tweaks done to your font settings.

1. Arial, Tahoma, Verdana has been replaced by 'Noto Sans'. This will affect the webpages.

Those 3 fonts are used a lot on websites, because most websites are still living in the old age. So wereplace them with Noto Sans, a modern and beautiful looking font from Google.

2. Georgia, Times New Roman replaced by Noto Serif. This will also affect the webpages. Same reason as before, Noto Serif looks very good.

3. Droid Sans is made the default sans and sans-serif font. This is used on desktop and also on webpagesas fallbacks. 4. Droid Serif is made the default serif font.

5. Droid Sans Mono is the default monospace font. This will be seen in the terminals and code editors.

Different fonts for desktop and webIt is important to note that we are using the Droid fonts for the desktop and the Noto fonts for the web(through replacement trick). We could have used the same droid fonts on the web too but it would notwork very well for a couple of reasons.

1. To make Droid fonts look the best on the desktop we use bci hinting (by disabling autohinting). Due tothis the fonts look very good, but there is a tradeoff. At size 12px ( which is very common on websites )the font look tiny. Using such a tiny font on a webpage hinders readability.

2. With auto hinter, the size would go up but rendering quality is hampered on the desktop.

3. On web pages Noto Sans with autohinter looks more clear compared to bci hinter, but slightly stretchedcompared to bci.

So to get the best looks on both the desktop and the web, I came up with the solution of using Droid onthe desktop with BCI hinting, and Noto on the web with autohinter.

So do these tweaks matterThe tweaks shown above were tested on LCD monitor at 96 dpi (not sure if that was the actual dpi of themonitor). On laptops fonts perform better, so even if you were to use a less nicer or a little bad looking font, it wouldlook good on laptops/pads where the pixel density is higher.

Moreover if you are using gnome, then your fonts are by default 11pt which is bigger than the 9pt/10ptexamples shown above. At big sizes fonts again perform better. Thats the reason the Ubuntu fonts lookgood enough on gnome. At smaller sizes the performance or the clarity becomes more testable.

That was the desktop part. On webpages fonts come in various sizes and 12px and 13px are the mostcommon. So this is the place that needs most of the beautification. So even if you are content with thegnome desktop with ubuntu font, the web fonts are surely not very upto the mark, as already shownabove.

So try out the tweaks and suggest me further improvements. I hope to continue developing the .fonts.conffile to tweak and tweak more the font settings to achieve don't know what. Have fun till then!!

Additional NotesGoogle Chrome is buggy when it comes to following the rules mentioned in the .fonts.conf file. It does notobey the pixelsize rules. This does not matter unless you want to tweak the fonts.conf file yourself. Firefoxfollows the rules very well.

In browsers, the fonts.conf hinting rules might not be followed if the actual fonts are not available on the

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About Silver Moon

Php developer, blogger and Linux enthusiast. He can be reached atadmin@binarytides.com. Or find him on Google+

system but present on the webpage through css3. In that case the default hinting rules would be followed.

On chrome, if the fonts are present on the system then fonts.conf rules shall be applied.

On firefox if fonts are loaded via css3 then the fonts.conf rules shall not be applied and default antialiasingwill be applied always. However if the same fonts are not loading by css3, then the fonts.conf rules shallbe applied.

ReferencesThis is a very old and probably the first article that ever came up talking about font issues on linux andhow to get windows like fonts on various linux distros. http://avi.alkalay.net/linux/docs/font-howto/Font.html

This is an excellent article that explains various fonts.conf settings like antialiasing, bci hinting, autohinting. Its a must read. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration

The syntax of the .fonts.conf file is explained here http://linux.die.net/man/5/fonts-conf

The original xml on which my tweaks are based can be found here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts

Last Updated On : 8th January 2014

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• Reply •

NoonianAtall • 2 years ago

Looks like you turned up hinting­­or that file you linked to without explaining does­­which is only subjectivelybetter. Many people think it makes text look worse (e.g. OS X doesn't use it). I can't stand single­pixel­widefonts, and that's what hinting forces at smaller sizes. Basically, I think your "before" shots look better than your"after" ones.

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• Reply •

torriem • 3 years ago

Even with standard fonts, my fonts on Linux have looked great for the last few years. I always turn on subpixelrendering and disable all hinting. That's the closest I can get to OS X's font rendering. Definitely the Droidfonts look superb. Though I disagree with replacing any and all serif fonts. At decent resolutions Serif fontsare easier to read than sans serif, especially for long blurbs such as news articles or books. There's a reasonRoman fonts have been in use for thousands of years! Perhaps in the future we'll look back on this time ofproliferation of sans serif fonts and see it as a brief period when we had to use sans serif fonts because wedidn't have good enough screens.

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• Reply •

Silver Moon • 3 years agoMod > torriem

We are not replacing serif fonts by sans serif.

Only the Georgia and Times New Roman fonts are replaced by Noto Serif, which is also a serif fontthat looks much better.

• Reply •

Alexey Morozov • 2 years ago

I wonder how you did manage to get subpixel font rendering in Plasma applets and panels, In most places(e.g in the panel clocks and in the K­menu I have grayscale rendering despite the system settings and fontrendering in applications.

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• Reply •

The111 • 2 years ago

Thanks for the excellent guide. I am happy with is for the most part, with a few very small exceptions. Onethat irks me a lot is that exclamation marks are nearly undistinguishable from lowercase L's. Any ideas how toimprove that?

1

Leonardo Rossi • a year ago> The111

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12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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• Reply •

Hi Matt, I have the same issue with exclamation marks (mine are looking like a J actually). Have you managed to solve this?

1

• Reply •

srikkbhat • 8 months ago

Does this work on Fedora 21?

• Reply •

Simon Peres • 10 months ago

Wow this is great. Works on my samsung and vaio laptops. anw, I use kubuntu for both. updated version ofxml .fonts.conf will be truly appreciated

• Reply •

Víctor Quirós Vargas • a year ago

Hi, it looks like the images for this article are gone and I remember they contain precious information on theconfiguration steps. Is it possible to have them all back? Thanks!

• Reply •

What for? • a year ago

I suggest Fantasque Sans Mono for monospace. http://openfontlibrary.org/en/...

• Reply •

Arun • a year ago

Infinality is another way to get the best font rendering on Ubuntu. It also allows to tweak many more options: http://tuxdiary.com/2014/09/27...

• Reply •

A. Nonymous • a year ago

*"... LCD monitor at 96 dpi (not sure if that was the actual dpi of the monitor) ..."*

DPI "calculator":

https://www.sven.de/dpi/

Perhaps one may also find that it helps to set the correct DPI via xrandr or xorg.conf.

It used to be correctly detected in earlier xorg versions, but it was decided that it should be bug­compatiblewith Windows (at least pre­7/8), and have a hard­coded default setting of 96dpi, rather than via configuration,regardless of anything.

Depending on your resolution, using the correct DPI may make things have wrong sizes though (or somewhatblurred fonts if the actual DPI is smaller, I guess), that's because some of the UIs are hard­coded to havepixel­based sizes rather than actual measurements size. Hopefully this will change soon, it seems almostunavoidable with the trend of responsive web design.

• Reply •

Kevin • 2 years ago

Thanks a lot, but I still have difficulties in tweaking font for Chromium browser on Ubuntu 14.04. The browsercould not display well, however, Firefox is fine.

• Reply •

Tom • 2 years ago

I did all these tweaks on ElementaryOS and now my login screen (Pantheon Greeter) has white boxes wherecharacters should be... After login the fonts appear fine, however. Anyone know how I can fix this?

• Reply •

A. Nonymous • a year ago> Tom

I'm not really sure, but I "often" see white boxes in place of characters that don't exist on a given font,like Asian characters, if I don't have the font installed. Perhaps it's something like that that ishappening, somehow.

• Reply •

Dave Gahan • 2 years ago

Thanks for this post! great fonts but I have a problem with chromium; if Im using Open Sans or Noto Sans; theURL bar's text becomes jumpy; as if It doesnt' fit, any similar behavior?

• Reply •

augustus wong • 2 years ago

what about lato pt mono pt sans pt serif on google web fonts

• Reply •

Al • 2 years ago

Hi, I installed Ubuntu 13.10 and tried to follow this manual, but when I modify .fonts.conf I receive square blocksinstead of letters, although I made all previous steps. What should I do to make everything works properly?

Thanks!

• Reply •

Falopius • 2 years ago

Absolutely awesome, the only thing that didn't fell good for me on Ubuntu was the lack of good sharp lookingfonts on my desktop. This worked like a charm

Lance • 2 years ago

Thanks, This worked well with slight tweeks for Linux Minut 15 Cinnamon and looks great. I also applied theFirefox settings to Thunderbird and vastly improved readability of email imo.

Cinnamon Fonts ­­ Menu ­> System Tools ­> System Settings ­> Fonts

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12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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• Reply •

Cinnamon Fonts ­­ Menu ­> System Tools ­> System Settings ­> Fonts Default Font ­ Droid Sans 9 Document Font ­ Droid Sans 9 Monospace Font ­ Droid Sans Mono 9 Window Title Font ­ Droid Sans 9

Hinting: Slight

• Reply •

Allan Nienhuis • 2 years ago

I was getting a number of errors/warnings in the console when launching binaries in ubuntu 13.04 using theconfig file linked in the gist above:

Having multiple values in <test> isn't supported and may not work as expected

I simply (and naively) duplicated the test condition for each of the child entries. This seemed to avoid the errormessages and the fonts seems to still render nicely so I don't _think_ I broke anything. But as mentioned thiswas a really naive change so your mileage may vary. gist here: https://gist.github.com/allann...

• Reply •

David Latapie • 2 years ago

You might appreciate my article about your work: http://david.latapie.name/blog...

• Reply •

Guest • 2 years ago> David Latapie

It's not better. It's totally different. See the screenshots on your blog, on the right side "Images" "I" hasa serif, the left side is sans serif. Replacing or substituting typefaces is NOT better than correctlyrendering, as Infinality does. I recommend Infinality over this method. Much better. Really.

• Reply •

doa • 2 years ago

Is there a way to make the typefaces appear more bolder/heavier?

• Reply •

Olivier Dony • 2 years ago

With the latest fontconfig version your fonts.conf file generates lots of warnings: "Having multiple values in<test> isn't supported and may not work as expected". I forked your gist to fix them in what seems to be theexpected way Thought you might want to have a look and update yours. https://gist.github.com/odony/...

• Reply •

Johannes • 2 years ago

Thanks, however, there is one problem I am having: With this .fonts.conf, rendering of most PDF files inFirefox' / Iceweasel's internal PDF viewer is very much messed up. For some reason, it displays huge,overlapping letters, making the page completely unreadable. I have already commented out some sections ofthe .fonts.conf, but so far to no avail. Any hint, which section might be to blame?

• Reply •

Silver Moon • 2 years agoMod > Johannes

the inbuilt pdf viewer of firefox does have its own font rendering issues. Not sure which fonts.conf setting is messing it up. May be you can try to avoid the replacement of arialby noto sans.

• Reply •

Johannes • 2 years ago> Silver Moon

I have tracked the problem down to lines 517­519 of the .fonts.conf. If I comment them out, theviewer works just fine. The lines in question go

<edit name="autohint" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> <\!­­ ­\­> </edit>

• Reply •

Silver Moon • 2 years agoMod > Johannes

So you had to disable autohinting for the font 'Book Antiqua'

• Reply •

rsking84 • 2 years ago> Silver Moon

Johannes, That fix doesn't work on my install. Note that I'm using Oliver Dony's forked version offonts.conf to avoid the "multiple values" warnings. Anyway, if I disable autohinting forBook Antiqua I still have the rendering problems in Firefox. Any other ideas?

• Reply •

anonBrian • 3 years ago

In the last couple of months I've replace Droid mono with Inconsolata it's my new favorite monospace font. Iuse it in konsole/yakuake, and in all my text editors/IDEs. http://www.google.com/fonts/sp...

• Reply •

Silver Moon • 3 years agoMod > anonBrian

I compared droid mono with inconsolata, and found that droid mono performs better in terms of clarityand nice­ness. However Droid Mono does not have a bold version with inconsolata has. This is adrawback for droid mono when used on webpages, where bold versions look bad with whateverhinting.

Added screenshots of both fonts in the post.

Pope Ron Polyp II • 3 years ago> Silver Moon

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12/7/2015 How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux

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• Reply •

Pope Ron Polyp II • 3 years ago> Silver Moon

My primary complaint with Droid Mono is that it is relatively difficult to distinguish between "0"and "O".

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• Reply •

Anonymous • 3 years ago

Hello Silver Moon,

thanks for the nice read.

One advise though. While sub­pixel smoothing can look great should one turn it off for creating screen shots.Not everyone's display uses left­to­right RGB ordering and it will then create colour fringes around letters forthose with a different ordering. Turn off sub­pixel smoothing and only use grey scale colours to make yourscreen shots "web safe".

• Reply •

Silver Moon • 3 years agoMod > Anonymous

Thanks for the suggestion, but I wonder, aren't most display devices like lcd monitors, laptops andpads using "left­to­right" rgb based pixel display ?

• Reply •

jon_downfromthetrees • 3 years ago

The screen grabs from Ubuntu look great. Are the results equivalent on systems that don't have Ubuntu's fontrendering patches?

• Reply •

Silver Moon • 3 years agoMod > jon_downfromthetrees

The rendering patches are not specific to ubuntu. Its the bci support in Freetype font engine. The BCI patents are now expired, so it is available on all major linux distros.

So the results should be identical on all linux systems that have BCI enabled.

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