5 ms·

Am I the only one who doesn't get what the fuss is about? I use macOS, I use Linux, I don't have a problem with the fonts. In my opinion they all look great.

Am I the only one who doesn't get what the fuss is about? I use macOS, I use Linux, I don't have a problem with the fonts. In my opinion they all look great. I'd say this though, macOS fonts generally look worse and too thick on a 1080p display.

nullindividual 3y ago
macOS isn't designed to run on non-HiDpi displays, like 1080p.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  I find the cutoff to sit around where 2560x1440 on 27" is. Anything lower has always looked less than great under macOS and has looked bad ever since they disabled RGB subpixel AA by default.
  - caseyohara 3y ago
    2560x1440 on 27" is only 109 PPI, which still isn't great for the viewing distance of desk work. Most recent MacBooks are in the range of 225-255 PPI. A 27" 5K is 218 PPI, which is the minimum pixel density for desk work, IMO.
    - kitsunesoba 3y ago
      Around 218 PPI is what I prefer too, but desktop displays with that pixel density are unfortunately expensive and uncommon. Only nearly a decade after Apple released 5k iMacs are similar monitors starting to become more available.
    - TacticalCoder 3y ago
      > A 27" 5K is 218 PPI, which is the minimum pixel density for desk work, IMO. I completely disagree with that. 110 dpi is totally fine for desk work. Always has been and will probably continue to be for a really long time. I take my 38" doing 3840x1600 at 110 DPI over a 27"K (or even two) doing 218 DPI any day. Now if you do photography or work on designing bills (as in money), then you'll want higher DPI. But for "desk work", there's zero need for anything more than 110 DPI. It may be "nice" to have retina fonts but it's by not a requirement. I'd even say the real world is powered by something like 95%+ of people doing "desk work" on 110 DPI (or less) screen. Also, if 5K / 218 PPI is the "minimum pixel density" for desk work, what's the minimum density for creatives?
      - kitsunesoba 3y ago
        I find ~218ppi noticeably easier on the eyes for code, but yeah it's not an absolute must. With the right font choice ~110 ppi is fine. Personally I wouldn't take an ultrawide over a high PPI main display and "regular" PPI second display but that's purely a matter of preference.
      - caseyohara 3y ago
        You're allowed to disagree with that, I stated it as my opinion. It's what works best for me for the type of work I do (programming, design, photography, video). By "desk work" I mean the type of work where the physical distance between your eyes and the display is ~50cm. Mobile devices like phones have higher pixel density because they are held closer to the eyes (~25cm) than a computer monitor on a desk. Angular pixel density is the important factor here. As kitsunesoba mentioned, I find >200 PPI much easier on the eyes when reading and writing text, my eyes don't get nearly as fatigued as they do on low PPI displays. I think it's one of those things that once you get used to high PPI displays, it's really hard to go back to low PPI. Have you looked at a pre-Retina iPhone or iPad recently? Would you take that over the high PPI display common on every mobile device today?
- ithkuil 3y ago
  I remember using MacOS (X) well before retina and fonts were better than both windows and Linux at that time. Then windows improved a lot (and I assume linux also did improve but honestly I stopped using Linux for the desktop long time ago so I don't remember) while MacOS support for low resolution text stagnated and I believe you if you say that on windows and/or Linux fonts may render better on low DPI than on a Mac. But I have to nitpick your phrasing that MacOS hasn't been designed to run on non-hidpi: that can be right since the design is not something you just change due to neglect; a design is something that stays forever and you see vestiges of
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    Their phrasing is honestly fine: Mojave dropped all support for subpixel aliasing, and if you're running on a non-retina display, you notice it. macOS quite literally is not designed for non-hidpi displays anymore.
  - riceart 3y ago
    > a design is something that stays forever and you see vestiges of No, that’s not how it works - this is engineering, not Deepak Chopra. Apple is not big on backward compat and legacy and when a compromise has to be made to favor either their current line up or legacy/3rd party they always choose the former. For instance new versions of macOS simply don’t support subpixel AA anymore because no standard Apple config involves non hidpi displays. Additionally, macOS renders via framebuffer scaling, not flexible UI scaling (with some good reasons for this compromise), but it’s a compromise and non retina font rendering suffers for it. Correctly configured Windows and Linux offer superior font rendering on non HiDPI and Linux is easily tunable to be subjectively better on any config.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    Windows used to have hinted fonts that respected the pixel grid. OS X used antialiasing. As a result, Windows looked much sharper, but chunkier. For creating media that was going to be rendered to print, the Mac approach was better, because the exact size of text was the same on the screen as it was printed. Personally I preferred the Windows approach. With HiDPI it doesn’t make much difference either way.
- m463 3y ago
  it used to be, then there was a change a few macos revs back. I think it was the font smoothing feature.
nazgulsenpai 3y ago
I'm right here with ya. I read other comments about how "bad" the Linux desktop experience is but my little xfce workstation has a consistent dark theme across all apps and perfectly legible fonts with very minimal effort -- and it was all in the first day of setting up my OS. I don't discount anyone's preferences I just personally don't understand it.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  And in Linux at least you can change the font in everything so if you want the full comic sans experience for some reason you’re free to do that
bdavbdav 3y ago
Whos running Mac OS on 1080?
- jacobgorm 3y ago
  Lot's of people have non-retina external monitors. I use a Mac Mini with a 46" LG 4k for most development work, and there the poor font rendering really shows. Fortunately, I have found that you can enable subpixel AA in browsers and in CSS stylesheets, and that solves the problem. Just weird that subpixel AA is not on by default on non-retina displays.
  - bdavbdav 3y ago
    How do you find the ergonomics of such a big screen? Does it sit a long way away?
    - jacobgorm 3y ago
      It’s great. Have it at the usual distance for a monitor.
heavyset_go 3y ago
Yeah, the title made me laugh because modern macOS font rendering looks worse than default Linux fonts with anti-aliasing. The OP doesn't even configure font rendering beyond the default, they're just adding macOS fonts to Linux.
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
  There are no default Linux fonts, unless you count console fonts drawn on a framebuffer. Text rendering on Ubuntu looked quite different to that on Fedora last time I looked at both.
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    When I said "default Linux fonts", I meant font rendering. Whatever you get without a default /etc/fonts/fonts.conf or user fonts.conf file is what I consider "default".
    - 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
      It's a meaningless statement because the Linux kernel does not render fonts or include anything like fonts.conf. Linux distributions are very different in how they configure and patch things like fontconfig/harfbuzz and what version of libraries they ship.
asciimov 3y ago
The default fonts with a base Linux install are at best terrible; not comics sans terrible but websites look off when compared to other operating systems. Fortunately, you can remedy this by installing better fonts. Some people will even go so far as to install all the fonts from Windows and MacOS to give them the right look wherever they go.
- atoav 3y ago
  Yeah? As someone who has been trained on typography who still learned how to literally cut letters for casting I must say I have no complaints with the fonts on my kde desktop.
arp242 3y ago
It's at least partly a matter of taste. I personally never liked the font rendering on OS X (well before retina became a thing); it just never really looked right to me; too thick and too much blurriness. Looking at the screenshots in the article, I personally prefer the "before" version. On my Linux machine I use Deja Vu fonts for pretty much anything. I very intentionally don't install "Windows compatibility fonts" and the like. In my opinion it looks great, but someone else might have a different opinion. I also used the classic "Xterm fixed" fonts for a long time and thought that looked great too (I switched to DejaVu Sans Mono a long time ago, mostly for better scaling) which still has a group of dedicated "fans" today, but many would probably consider it horrendous. One thing I will say that's objectively bad is fontconfig configuration, which is quite arcane.
- anthk 3y ago
  Get Unifont and try setting the fonts from 12px to 16px, 20px, 24px, 32px... until it fits well.

nullindividual 3y ago

macOS isn't designed to run on non-HiDpi displays, like 1080p.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
I find the cutoff to sit around where 2560x1440 on 27" is. Anything lower has always looked less than great under macOS and has looked bad ever since they disabled RGB subpixel AA by default.
- caseyohara 3y ago
  2560x1440 on 27" is only 109 PPI, which still isn't great for the viewing distance of desk work. Most recent MacBooks are in the range of 225-255 PPI. A 27" 5K is 218 PPI, which is the minimum pixel density for desk work, IMO.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    Around 218 PPI is what I prefer too, but desktop displays with that pixel density are unfortunately expensive and uncommon. Only nearly a decade after Apple released 5k iMacs are similar monitors starting to become more available.
  - TacticalCoder 3y ago
    > A 27" 5K is 218 PPI, which is the minimum pixel density for desk work, IMO. I completely disagree with that. 110 dpi is totally fine for desk work. Always has been and will probably continue to be for a really long time. I take my 38" doing 3840x1600 at 110 DPI over a 27"K (or even two) doing 218 DPI any day. Now if you do photography or work on designing bills (as in money), then you'll want higher DPI. But for "desk work", there's zero need for anything more than 110 DPI. It may be "nice" to have retina fonts but it's by not a requirement. I'd even say the real world is powered by something like 95%+ of people doing "desk work" on 110 DPI (or less) screen. Also, if 5K / 218 PPI is the "minimum pixel density" for desk work, what's the minimum density for creatives?
    - kitsunesoba 3y ago
      I find ~218ppi noticeably easier on the eyes for code, but yeah it's not an absolute must. With the right font choice ~110 ppi is fine. Personally I wouldn't take an ultrawide over a high PPI main display and "regular" PPI second display but that's purely a matter of preference.
    - caseyohara 3y ago
      You're allowed to disagree with that, I stated it as my opinion. It's what works best for me for the type of work I do (programming, design, photography, video). By "desk work" I mean the type of work where the physical distance between your eyes and the display is ~50cm. Mobile devices like phones have higher pixel density because they are held closer to the eyes (~25cm) than a computer monitor on a desk. Angular pixel density is the important factor here. As kitsunesoba mentioned, I find >200 PPI much easier on the eyes when reading and writing text, my eyes don't get nearly as fatigued as they do on low PPI displays. I think it's one of those things that once you get used to high PPI displays, it's really hard to go back to low PPI. Have you looked at a pre-Retina iPhone or iPad recently? Would you take that over the high PPI display common on every mobile device today?
ithkuil 3y ago
I remember using MacOS (X) well before retina and fonts were better than both windows and Linux at that time. Then windows improved a lot (and I assume linux also did improve but honestly I stopped using Linux for the desktop long time ago so I don't remember) while MacOS support for low resolution text stagnated and I believe you if you say that on windows and/or Linux fonts may render better on low DPI than on a Mac. But I have to nitpick your phrasing that MacOS hasn't been designed to run on non-hidpi: that can be right since the design is not something you just change due to neglect; a design is something that stays forever and you see vestiges of
- Klonoar 3y ago
  Their phrasing is honestly fine: Mojave dropped all support for subpixel aliasing, and if you're running on a non-retina display, you notice it. macOS quite literally is not designed for non-hidpi displays anymore.
- riceart 3y ago
  > a design is something that stays forever and you see vestiges of No, that’s not how it works - this is engineering, not Deepak Chopra. Apple is not big on backward compat and legacy and when a compromise has to be made to favor either their current line up or legacy/3rd party they always choose the former. For instance new versions of macOS simply don’t support subpixel AA anymore because no standard Apple config involves non hidpi displays. Additionally, macOS renders via framebuffer scaling, not flexible UI scaling (with some good reasons for this compromise), but it’s a compromise and non retina font rendering suffers for it. Correctly configured Windows and Linux offer superior font rendering on non HiDPI and Linux is easily tunable to be subjectively better on any config.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  Windows used to have hinted fonts that respected the pixel grid. OS X used antialiasing. As a result, Windows looked much sharper, but chunkier. For creating media that was going to be rendered to print, the Mac approach was better, because the exact size of text was the same on the screen as it was printed. Personally I preferred the Windows approach. With HiDPI it doesn’t make much difference either way.
m463 3y ago
it used to be, then there was a change a few macos revs back. I think it was the font smoothing feature.

nazgulsenpai 3y ago

I'm right here with ya. I read other comments about how "bad" the Linux desktop experience is but my little xfce workstation has a consistent dark theme across all apps and perfectly legible fonts with very minimal effort -- and it was all in the first day of setting up my OS. I don't discount anyone's preferences I just personally don't understand it.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
And in Linux at least you can change the font in everything so if you want the full comic sans experience for some reason you’re free to do that

bdavbdav 3y ago

Whos running Mac OS on 1080?

jacobgorm 3y ago
Lot's of people have non-retina external monitors. I use a Mac Mini with a 46" LG 4k for most development work, and there the poor font rendering really shows. Fortunately, I have found that you can enable subpixel AA in browsers and in CSS stylesheets, and that solves the problem. Just weird that subpixel AA is not on by default on non-retina displays.
- bdavbdav 3y ago
  How do you find the ergonomics of such a big screen? Does it sit a long way away?
  - jacobgorm 3y ago
    It’s great. Have it at the usual distance for a monitor.

heavyset_go 3y ago

Yeah, the title made me laugh because modern macOS font rendering looks worse than default Linux fonts with anti-aliasing. The OP doesn't even configure font rendering beyond the default, they're just adding macOS fonts to Linux.

5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
There are no default Linux fonts, unless you count console fonts drawn on a framebuffer. Text rendering on Ubuntu looked quite different to that on Fedora last time I looked at both.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  When I said "default Linux fonts", I meant font rendering. Whatever you get without a default /etc/fonts/fonts.conf or user fonts.conf file is what I consider "default".
  - 5e92cb50239222b 3y ago
    It's a meaningless statement because the Linux kernel does not render fonts or include anything like fonts.conf. Linux distributions are very different in how they configure and patch things like fontconfig/harfbuzz and what version of libraries they ship.

asciimov 3y ago

The default fonts with a base Linux install are at best terrible; not comics sans terrible but websites look off when compared to other operating systems. Fortunately, you can remedy this by installing better fonts. Some people will even go so far as to install all the fonts from Windows and MacOS to give them the right look wherever they go.

atoav 3y ago
Yeah? As someone who has been trained on typography who still learned how to literally cut letters for casting I must say I have no complaints with the fonts on my kde desktop.

arp242 3y ago

It's at least partly a matter of taste. I personally never liked the font rendering on OS X (well before retina became a thing); it just never really looked right to me; too thick and too much blurriness. Looking at the screenshots in the article, I personally prefer the "before" version. On my Linux machine I use Deja Vu fonts for pretty much anything. I very intentionally don't install "Windows compatibility fonts" and the like. In my opinion it looks great, but someone else might have a different opinion. I also used the classic "Xterm fixed" fonts for a long time and thought that looked great too (I switched to DejaVu Sans Mono a long time ago, mostly for better scaling) which still has a group of dedicated "fans" today, but many would probably consider it horrendous. One thing I will say that's objectively bad is fontconfig configuration, which is quite arcane.

anthk 3y ago
Get Unifont and try setting the fonts from 12px to 16px, 20px, 24px, 32px... until it fits well.