5 ms·

I see font rendering in linux is still pretty horrible.

shmerl 12y ago
Font rendering is as configured. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration
- Scarbutt 12y ago
  Yeah, I know you can make fonts look nice in linux, but distros ship with horrible defaults.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Fonts configuration is always rather subjective. I often don't like defaults. This applies to any system. Good ones allow greater flexibility. Bad ones assume they know best and force "best defaults" without any way to improve them.
    - Scarbutt 12y ago
      Is not about font taste, is about brokenness, you can clearly see in the screenshot that the fonts are rendered poorly, some letters are lighter than others, half of a letter is lighter than the other half, some don't look smooth, etc...
      - shmerl 12y ago
        Not sure about that system. I'm using Debian testing and it has very good quality defaults (visually) which I change anyway to suit some of my preferences. So the claim about that "distros ship horrible defaults" is not universally applicable.
      - db48x 12y ago
        Firefox renders text using whatever text rendering settings you have set up on your computer. These differ from platform to platform, and from monitor to monitor. If you don't like sub-pixel rendering, you just turn it off and all the programs on your machine, Firefox included, stop using it. Others have also mentioned that the subpixel order differs from monitor to monitor, so if the screenshot was taken on a monitor with BGR subpixels and your monitor has RGB subpixels, the text will look much, much, worse than if there had been no subpixel rendering at all. Or perhaps you, like me, have a CRT and subpixel rendering always looks wrong. It's hardly Firefox's fault.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    First, who do you think you are to question my font configuration skills (hint: nil), second, as mentioned earlier, there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack and frankly I don't care. I tried to care though, and it backfired at me (emacs was fubared, and that's a deal breaker), and this default config, even subpar, is pretty enough and stable enough. Lastly, chromium manages to set up itself better and fonts look better in it. SoFTWare.
    - Scarbutt 12y ago
      " The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack " agreed ;)
    - shmerl 12y ago
      > there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack Not really. Just learning about how to adjust preferences for FontConfig. Antialiasing, hinting and subpixel rendering have a lot of effect on the visual appearance especially. You can read about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Fontconfig_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Font... There can be also some monitor specific tweaks like LCD filtering. More feature rich DEs give quite easy to use interfaces for managing all that (for example KDE). So if you are using some barebones DE / WM, then you should be ready to do all that manually in the config files.
      - agumonkey 12y ago
        I did try arch wiki advices, I got some results but I didn't really understand what I was doing and had lots of undesired side-effects (emacs buffer redraw failed, screenshot aliasing failed,...) so I dropped everything and used stock config. The xml config files seems overly complex (I admit, I suffer from acute xml ad-formatem) for my tastes. I tried to diff manjaro linux /etc/fontconfig actually, just to see what they were doing right to have such nice visuals and couldn't find anything. It's in the same basket as some famous audio server, which I replaced by it's very naive ancestor.
  - spain 12y ago
    >distros ship with horrible defaults. I guess you haven't used Ubuntu lately, which ships with better fonts than my Windows machine.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      Or, you know, people have different subjective preferences in fonts.
      - Scarbutt 12y ago
        From another comment: Is not about font taste, is about brokenness, you can clearly see in the screenshot that the fonts are rendered poorly, some letters are lighter than others, half of a letter is lighter than the other half, some don't look smooth, etc...
    - Scarbutt 12y ago
      Yes, to me, Ubuntu has the best defaults.
tedunangst 12y ago
Perhaps you could be more specific?
aw3c2 12y ago
You know, you might be looking at a screenshot that has font settings (hinting etc) which work on the originating display and fail on yours. No reason to jump to snarkiness.
- Scarbutt 12y ago
  You do realize the screenshot is an image right?
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Don't be so quick my dear, sometimes screenshots differ dramatically from what the user sees.
  - thegeomaster 12y ago
    Yes, a JPEG image :)
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    That doesn't matter. The pixel output of subpixel rendering only works on monitors with the pixel layout it's intended for.
    - zem 12y ago
      whoa, that is something i never thought about before.
      - aw3c2 12y ago
        Take a screenshot and zoom in on text, chances are that you will see lots of subtly colored pixels around it.
  - puetzk 12y ago
    Yes, but font hinting takes advantage of the specific subpixel layout of your LCD (e.g is the order RGB left-to-right, top-to-bottom, two greens and forming a square, etc). If you take a screenshot and look at it on another monitor, it's quite possible for it to look awful because your RGB subpixel layout and the source differ.
vhost- 12y ago
I was going to saw the same thing, but didn't because I figured I'd get downvoted for it on HN. Seems I was right. I use debian and arch with http://www.infinality.net/blog/ http://www.infinality.net/blog/ and the fonts have never looked better.
wz1000 12y ago
I don't see anything wrong with the font rendering on that.

Font rendering is as configured. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration

Scarbutt 12y ago
Yeah, I know you can make fonts look nice in linux, but distros ship with horrible defaults.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Fonts configuration is always rather subjective. I often don't like defaults. This applies to any system. Good ones allow greater flexibility. Bad ones assume they know best and force "best defaults" without any way to improve them.
  - Scarbutt 12y ago
    Is not about font taste, is about brokenness, you can clearly see in the screenshot that the fonts are rendered poorly, some letters are lighter than others, half of a letter is lighter than the other half, some don't look smooth, etc...
    - shmerl 12y ago
      Not sure about that system. I'm using Debian testing and it has very good quality defaults (visually) which I change anyway to suit some of my preferences. So the claim about that "distros ship horrible defaults" is not universally applicable.
    - db48x 12y ago
      Firefox renders text using whatever text rendering settings you have set up on your computer. These differ from platform to platform, and from monitor to monitor. If you don't like sub-pixel rendering, you just turn it off and all the programs on your machine, Firefox included, stop using it. Others have also mentioned that the subpixel order differs from monitor to monitor, so if the screenshot was taken on a monitor with BGR subpixels and your monitor has RGB subpixels, the text will look much, much, worse than if there had been no subpixel rendering at all. Or perhaps you, like me, have a CRT and subpixel rendering always looks wrong. It's hardly Firefox's fault.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  First, who do you think you are to question my font configuration skills (hint: nil), second, as mentioned earlier, there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack and frankly I don't care. I tried to care though, and it backfired at me (emacs was fubared, and that's a deal breaker), and this default config, even subpar, is pretty enough and stable enough. Lastly, chromium manages to set up itself better and fonts look better in it. SoFTWare.
  - Scarbutt 12y ago
    " The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack " agreed ;)
  - shmerl 12y ago
    > there are ways to have 'better' font rendering. The thing is it requires a PhD in Linux display stack Not really. Just learning about how to adjust preferences for FontConfig. Antialiasing, hinting and subpixel rendering have a lot of effect on the visual appearance especially. You can read about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Fontconfig_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration#Font... There can be also some monitor specific tweaks like LCD filtering. More feature rich DEs give quite easy to use interfaces for managing all that (for example KDE). So if you are using some barebones DE / WM, then you should be ready to do all that manually in the config files.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      I did try arch wiki advices, I got some results but I didn't really understand what I was doing and had lots of undesired side-effects (emacs buffer redraw failed, screenshot aliasing failed,...) so I dropped everything and used stock config. The xml config files seems overly complex (I admit, I suffer from acute xml ad-formatem) for my tastes. I tried to diff manjaro linux /etc/fontconfig actually, just to see what they were doing right to have such nice visuals and couldn't find anything. It's in the same basket as some famous audio server, which I replaced by it's very naive ancestor.
- spain 12y ago
  >distros ship with horrible defaults. I guess you haven't used Ubuntu lately, which ships with better fonts than my Windows machine.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Or, you know, people have different subjective preferences in fonts.
    - Scarbutt 12y ago
      From another comment: Is not about font taste, is about brokenness, you can clearly see in the screenshot that the fonts are rendered poorly, some letters are lighter than others, half of a letter is lighter than the other half, some don't look smooth, etc...
  - Scarbutt 12y ago
    Yes, to me, Ubuntu has the best defaults.

tedunangst 12y ago

Perhaps you could be more specific?

aw3c2 12y ago

You know, you might be looking at a screenshot that has font settings (hinting etc) which work on the originating display and fail on yours. No reason to jump to snarkiness.

Scarbutt 12y ago
You do realize the screenshot is an image right?
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Don't be so quick my dear, sometimes screenshots differ dramatically from what the user sees.
- thegeomaster 12y ago
  Yes, a JPEG image :)
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  That doesn't matter. The pixel output of subpixel rendering only works on monitors with the pixel layout it's intended for.
  - zem 12y ago
    whoa, that is something i never thought about before.
    - aw3c2 12y ago
      Take a screenshot and zoom in on text, chances are that you will see lots of subtly colored pixels around it.
- puetzk 12y ago
  Yes, but font hinting takes advantage of the specific subpixel layout of your LCD (e.g is the order RGB left-to-right, top-to-bottom, two greens and forming a square, etc). If you take a screenshot and look at it on another monitor, it's quite possible for it to look awful because your RGB subpixel layout and the source differ.

vhost- 12y ago

I was going to saw the same thing, but didn't because I figured I'd get downvoted for it on HN. Seems I was right. I use debian and arch with http://www.infinality.net/blog/ http://www.infinality.net/blog/ and the fonts have never looked better.

wz1000 12y ago

I don't see anything wrong with the font rendering on that.