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The explanation was a bit too technical for me to understand (without first learning a lot more about fonts and rendering). I mostly use Windows, macOS and iOS
by AnonC 2y ago
The explanation was a bit too technical for me to understand (without first learning a lot more about fonts and rendering).
I mostly use Windows, macOS and iOS/iPadOS (I used to use Linux many years ago). But if I were to rate font rendering on screens and “how good the fonts look”, I’d agree with the question and its assessment: for me, macOS looks significantly better than Windows, which looks somewhat better than Linux.
Another thing I’ve seen is that application developers also need to put effort on this. LibreOffice, which I use on Windows and macOS, looks awful (I still use it and donate to it). I can see how “rough” the fonts look. It’s not just LibreOffice. Applications running on Linux don’t look as good as macOS native apps either.
If Linux in general focused more on how good the fonts and UI look (like elementary OS), it would be a lot nicer to promote. Functionality matters. But looking good also does (and for many people it’s their first impression).
- invalidname 2y agoMy TL;DR is this: Microsoft did some hacks to get the fonts to look good on lower resolution machines e.g. relying on the way the pixel Red Green and Blue colors were positioned to improve font smoothness. This paid off in the short term. Apple just did the "right thing" in calculating fonts accurately and increasing resolution consistently to get every pixel to the right place. They have one consistent engine that renders fonts the "right way" where Microsoft has a messy set of pipelines delivering inconsistent/outdated results.
- viraptor 2y agoThere's no generic "Linux" look really. It's very configurable, so you can achieve the look you want with it. The defaults will differ between environments too. See the follow-up discussions and config options in that Twitter thread.