Is it really as bad as you make it out to be? I've got everything at home: old non-retina MacBook Airs running OS X, a M1/retina MacBook Air running OS X, Windows (well, wife's computer) and then Linux laptops and desktops.

Fonts on my main Linux "workstation" may not be as perfect as on the M1 Mac I use from the couch but it's because my 38" monitor ain't retina and it's a far cry from making "browsing uncomfortable".

Yes, many of the CSS stacks (even for the big sites which really should know better) are totally broken when it comes to Linux (they don't list enough fonts that various distro will have by default, they list fonts that many distro will not have by default and unsurprisingly end up defaulting to shitty fonts) and as soon as one site started using that one CSS stack, they all started the copy/pasta. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that browsing on Linux is "uncomfortable": many people do that on a daily basis and are perfectly happy.

Also not all websites have broken CSS font stacks for Linux. Some saw the light.

> Is it really as bad as you make it out to be?

Yes.

> my 38" monitor ain't retina … perfectly happy

Put another way, either you are not visually discerning or your bar is lower.

// Since “FHD” laptops, and monitors <4K, are still a thing, you are not alone.

I think you misunderstood me. I've actually worked in print. I've written and typeset more books than I can count using professional DTP software (and LaTeX too). I know a thing or two about fonts.

I do not expect a non-retina display to display fonts as beautifully as a retina display, just to make things clear.

What I'm saying is that fonts under Linux aren't bad to the point of being uncomfortable.

And just to make it clear: I've got Windows and Linux, on non-retina displays, showing the same sites. Linux ain't worse.

There's a big difference between saying: "Retina displays are better than non retina ones" and saying: "Linux font sucks".

Yup: not everyone is on 4K / retina display. We know that. It doesn't make font rendering on Linux broken.

Since you bring it up, my second sysadmin gig was head of systems for a printing company, late 80s - early 90s, where I brought them into the digital typesetting era. So I also know more than a thing or two about fonts.

But I suspect you bringing it up, and me responding to it, doesn’t make either position more authoritative. And given “I’ve written more books than I can count” it could be your discernment of numbers or bar for objectively counting things is lower. ;-)

About retina vs. non retina, I’d argue font rendering algos matter more the less resolution they’re working with, so are even more important on non-retina displays. I’d further argue MacOS regressed on this by killing off sub-pixel rendering in Mojave, effectively dropping support for non-retina.

On low quality displays, Windows and Linux could/should look better than MacOS. When they don’t, they’re “doing it wrong”.

I have to agree here. Font rendering in Linux is across the board noticeably worse than macOS. I still can't quite understand why.

Agree with what? That's not the original point. The original point was that Linux font rendering "doesn't come close to Windows or Mac".

You're all shifting the goalpost.

Nobody is saying that fonts on a retina display on OS X do not look better than fonts on a non-retina display on Linux.

What we're disputing is that fonts rendering on Linux is so bad that it's "uncomfortable".

Now we may have a discussion as to whether everybody should be using retina display or not but that'd be another topic.

I have a 2012 MBP and two other machines running Linux. I'm not talking about retina displays at all (I don't have one). The rendering difference is noticeable. "Uncomfortable" is exactly the word I would use.

I have Ubuntu running in Parallels on an iMac, retina display, and the Ubuntu fonts seem noticeably less "nice" to look at than the Mac. Now, I didn't take the Pepsi Challenge here, i.e. a blind test, so it might just be internal bias -- but to me, the Mac fonts are noticeably better.

My experience with font rendering on Linux is that it's much better than on Windows, on comparable displays. I have fought with my Windows station at work to get acceptable font rendering for anything but the optimized-for-ClearType system fonts, but font rendering on Linux is great, and if you have different preferences, there are adequate levers to adjust it (via, e.g., GNOME Tweak Tool).

(In particular, I get color banding and inconsistent weights in Windows, especially with thin fonts.)

Linux can have crappy font rendering.

I can also have gorgeous font rendering. I would mess around with some live distros to see what you prefer.

This is how my comment looks to me (on linux): https://i.imgur.com/wvruFyX.png

It looks very bad tbh. This is how my comment looks on Mac for comparison. Uploading to imgur to test if there is compression in play here. https://i.imgur.com/hSirmx6.png

You're either using 200% scaling or browser zoom because I had to scale your image by 50% on a 4K display for it to look 100% sized. This is apples-oranges.

And if you're looking at those other screenshots on a 4K display then you need to also zoom to 50% and get your eyes close the the display, otherwise you're just seeing the results of an image scaling algorithm, which will indeed look terrible.

Here is Fedora/KDE/Flatpak/Firefox with default settings at 4K resolution and 100% browser zoom for comparison:

https://i.imgur.com/s3ynhuj.png

Also with my preferred browser zoom: https://i.imgur.com/9PXDbxY.png

For the above images you'll need to zoom 50% on a 4K display, because PNG image files do not carry pixel density metadata. If you have 1080p display then you have to keep 100% zoom and sit far away instead.

no I'm not using any zoom or extra scaling. It's the native scaling of mbp retina display. Screenshot is ~2 times bigger than what I actually see.

edit: your second screenshot looks very sharp and nice on my display.

Retina display is at least 200% or more scaling, right? You're comparing hires text rendering to lowres. Screenshot is 2x bigger because browser doesn't know about pixel density and scales it 2x by default. It does the same to those low res screenshots so they look normal sized on 4K but they're blurry because they're being image scaled.

See: https://johankj.github.io/devicePixelRatio/

If you see more than 1 at 100% zoom you have resolution scaling. Try browser zooming to 50% or 200%.

Yes retina display is 2x. But saying a display is 4k doesn't tell anything about its pixel density or scaling.

I look at the original commenters screenshot at 50% browser scaling but it's still blurry. I guess there is an element of image compression there.

On the other hand; from my own experience (I own linux, macos and windows pcs) on the same display Macos text rendering is much more sharper and pleasant to look at.

> Yes retina display is 2x. But saying a display is 4k doesn't tell anything about its pixel density or scaling.

I mean with fractional scaling where 1 < devicePixelRation < 2 you're doing it wrong and everything will look bad anyway, so I just assumed integer scaling. And 4K @100% is unusable anyway.

But more to the point you can't easily display those screenshots with different fractional scaling without pixel grid misalignment.

> On the other hand; from my own experience (I own linux, macos and windows pcs) on the same display Macos text rendering is much more sharper and pleasant to look at.

On hires displays (devicePixelRatio >= 2) you're probably just comparing default fonts. And on lowres display (devicePixelRatio = 1) OSX is much much worse than Windows's Cleartype, it's not even a contest.

Linux was always able to be as good as Windows on lowres displays, just was held back by patents, so the Freetype defaults used to suck, and you had to configure it yourself for the full effect.

Idk if it's any better nowadays, 4K display are so cheap and ubiquitous that I really don't get why anyone would buy anything else, except I guess gamers. But with all those AI scaling technologies (FSR 2.0 etc.) hopefully 1440p is on the way out.

> And 4K @100% is unusable anyway.

That depends on the physical display size and viewing distance.

No, not really. 4K@100% is 4x working space as 1080p. There's no way to put that much information in your field of view all at once. If you scale it up (or get really close) where anything is legible it goes out of your field of view and you can only look at (roughly) 1/3 sized region of the screen at a time. That's not usable as a single display. You're basically emulating multi-monitor 1080p at this point.

If you need more working space there's always 5K. That's 1440p@2x. You can even DIY one for pretty cheap. I know there's at least one 3:2 4K display on the market as well, though I wish there was a 24" version.

> That's not usable as a single display. You're basically emulating multi-monitor 1080p at this point.

That's a distinction that doesn't have to exist. If you don't insist on maximizing all windows, a single large monitor gives you more flexibility that multiple monitors with the same total screen area. E.g. for many applications 1080p is too wide to be effectively be used by a single window but too narrow to have two windows side by side. Dividing a 4K or screen by 3 is much better and also allows you to freely choose the window sizes. Some basic tiling support in your WM (either automatic or via shortcuts) is recommended ofc.

I use a 38" 3840x1600 monitor (= about 110 DPI) at 100% scaling and it works just fine for me at normal sitting distance. That's the same horizontal resolution as 4K and I don't think the missing 560 pixel rows would make much difference to how I would use it.

I use a 23.7" 4K (2160p) @ 200% and I think it's barely enough pixel density (180ppi), so I can't relate to this at all.

Apple's "retina 4K" LG Ultrafine 4K Display is actually 4096x2304 at this size, which is much higher density at 218.58 PPI.

Not bad for me on Fedora 36 Wayland, 2x scaling and no hinting, like God intended.

https://imgur.com/a/ZFTwW6A

This is as good as macOS' rendering as I've ever seen on any other machine, and I'm really fastidious about my fonts. It's really easy to achieve:

1. Install Fedora

2. In GNOME Tweaks, disable font hinting. Looks good only on HiDPI screens, this is why it's not default. If you're not on Fedora, change all fonts to Noto because they're much higher quality.

3. Optional: copy the Windows and macOS fonts to avoid the crappy "lookalike" replacements. The screenshot above uses Verdana straight from a Windows 10 installation, which is exactly what's requested by HN's stylesheet.

https://i.imgur.com/ptUyCn0.png another linux screenshot fwiw

interestingly I much prefer mine. :\

I guess font rendering is very subjective.

Setting aside font selection and looking at rendering, yours is softer around the edges which may subjectively feel pleasant when looking at it as an image but is objectively worse for reading.

Look at the last word, "linux". In both the "n" and "u", the left stem is thin and crisp, but the right stem is thick and blurry. Maybe it doesn't bother you, but I couldn't put up with that if I were using it all day.

You're right about trying different distros. Manjaro+Gnome does much better IMO: https://i.imgur.com/kiLDWzJ.png

That seems pretty terrible to me, even discounting the fact that it's monospace (I use monospace for editing too). Especially notice how the letters have inconsistent thicknesses, sometimes thicker on the left vs the right or vice versa, sometimes even different thicknesses depending on where they appear in the sentence (e.g. look at the 'n')

Hmm not sure if it’s the quality of the image or the font, but that might prove his point, that looks quite bad.

Is not subpixel rendering of fonts impossible to illustrate unless you sit down in front of the same monitor (or at least similar hardware)

Yes, doesn't have to be the same monitor but it needs to have the same subpixel orientation and you need to have the same resolution or 2x resolution and scale 50% so it pixel aligns.

If you look at those screenshots on a 4K display they're incredibly blurry because all you're looking at is your browser doing image scaling optimized for photographs.

It's both. The image compression makes it not perfect, and it's also a monospaced font, which makes it impossible to say anything about the kerning.

How does it look for you?

I hope the blurriness is because of image compression. Because if it is not, the rendering is really bad here.

Hrm, looks fine to me; this is how windows looks through the same compression: https://i.imgur.com/JRt9aIo.png

Wow, everyone is different I guess. That looks awful to me. I would go mad if I had to use that.

The kerning on your screenshot is very chunky. In particular look at the kerning on the lower case r’s in your screenshot. The r is given way too much horizontal space particularly to it’s right, especially so in the word “crappy”.

AH, that's because I'm using a monospace font for editing, normal pages use the normal font: https://i.imgur.com/otqaSTa.png

That looks horrible to me too, perhaps I'm used to windows but the word "comment" sticks out to me there as particularly bad.

It's not even the right font, unless you're using custom CSS. The Hacker News stylesheet calls for "Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif", and your PC renders a serif font instead. Something's wrong with your fontconfig setup.

What's your distro?

I'm using Archlinux and/or Gentoo.

Fontconfig is working fine but Verdana is a Microsoft font and Geneva is a Apple font.

My font fallback for sans-serif is DejaVu Serif.

The font fallback for sans-serif should be DejaVu Sans, not Serif. I didn't have any issue last time I used Arch.

I think it’s a monospace font, which makes the keming look bad

Shouln't it be ke r n i ng instead of keming if you are talking about a monospace font.

That screenshot is not very good at all, and I'm on Linux myself. You're just a few tweaks away from better rendering.

Willing to be wrong of course, I suspect that what I'm seeing and what others are seeing are quite different.

Perhaps there's a component of how the LCD is presenting it involved? to me my font is extremely uniform and sharp with no bleeding or blurring.

What tweaks do you have? I used to run X11 and ran the gamut of x11 based font rendering tweaks (example of how my old machine looked: https://i.imgur.com/J9biJsW.png )

But with sway/wayland I have much less ability to change things.

This screenshot looks better than the other of yours, but honestly I think it's more due how how antialiasing is rendered there vs in your Firefox screenshot.

Additionally, for ages Linux had shipped with Full hinting, which means distorting the font so straight lines are always on integer pixel boundaries, which looks atrocious. These days distros like Fedora use Light hinting, which is a little better, and in my opinion No hinting looks best, which is what macOS does, but on a low DPI screen means having blurry font. So on low DPI screens you have the choice between distorted but clean fonts, or undistorted blurry fonts.

I don't know about sway, in my case I'm using Fedora with 2x scaling, so I have the option of disabling hinting and avoiding distortion.

That honestly looks like something from a laptop in 1998. I haven't seen a screen that bad in a very long time.

That's an interesting perspective. Certainly not saying you're wrong. I found the font on Windows (note: Windows 10) unbearable despite deploying a plethora of "tweaks" and "fixes", and wasn't content until I made the the switch to Linux & MAC (home and work, respectively.) edit: Noto Sans or Futura BK Book for Interface & Document, Hack Regular for Monospace.

This may have been true in the past but I spend my day swivel-chairing between a current-gen MBP and a Debian derivative running Cinnamon. Both displays are the same and I don't find that the Mac is better. Maybe I'm less critical than others.

What's interesting is the MBP handles external displays horribly with the current version of OS X. Lid closure is a crap shoot on what the device decides to do.

Firefox lets you set local fonts in place of webfonts. The bad font rendering on desktop may not be completely ameliorated, but you can play around with some of the more well-designed font families (Noto, Adobe Source, IBM Plex) to give it a better look.

When I used Gnome3 on a HiDPI notebook fonts looked fine once I switched my interface font to a newer Helvetica and turned all of the system font smoothing feature off

I disagree. Which "Linux" are you even talking about? (it's not the Kernel that's relevant here of course)