Fedora 36 Looking To Change Its Default Fonts

[intelfx]

Meanwhile I continue to use Microsoft TTF fonts which look spectacular.

Also, there's a nice add-on for Firefox called ReFont which allows to disable custom Web fonts which have infested the entire web. Windows 10 and 11 render them OK'ish (in classic applications) but FreeType/Pango continue to struggle hard with them, so I prefer not to see them at all.

Here's how I see this page in case people want to enjoy something warm, crisp and nice. Make sure you see this screenshot at 100% scale/magnification.

This is the worst font demo screenshot I've seen in a few years. Ah, Windows XP memories.

[cl333r]

I confess I tend to uninstall all noto* and use Liberation fonts with full hinting I have a weird taste regarding fonts...

you....
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[juarezr]

A lot of the fonts discussed here are old, and designed for the 80dpi display era.

Noto is very complete, but also quite plain, boring, and in my opinion a bit ugly.

If you are lucky enough for your language to be covered by either of these fonts, they are far better and more modern than any of those discussed so far:

https://github.com/IBM/plex (System UI font)

https://github.com/impallari/Cabin (Firefox default sans font, taking notes etc.)

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code (terminal/coding font)

https://github.com/silnrsi/font-gent...ses/tag/v6.001 (beautiful serif font for long text documents)

also make sure that you have the following settings:

hinting: slight, subpixel antialiasing: rgb, lcdfilter: default (most 94 dpi+ monitor)

hinting: off, subpixel antialiasing: off, lcdfilter: none (4k monitor)

Iosevka rules Mono fonts!

[tekdan]

What's wrong with Cantarell? From my perspective any font that doesn't distinguish I and l (capitalized "i" and lower "L") shouldn't even exist.

I use Cantarell by default even on KDE Plasma.

[abu_shawarib]

Good, because most distos have Arabic fonts that by default looks ugly as shit. Noto is way nicer.

[SkyWarrior]

Just installed google-noto-sans and google-noto-serif onto my fedora instance and yes it is much better than anything that comes as default. Even red hat display font looked ugly next to it.

[artivision]

Instead of 200 similar fonts i prefer 30 different ones. Different much like cartoon fonts or bloody fonts.

[Shiba]

Noto has the best free japanese fonts in my opinion, and to me they look better than RICOH/MS Mincho fonts.

Personally I prefer the M+ one, but Noto is a good default.

[er888kh]

The ubuntu fonts for Arabic language is very very ugly.

Weird, especially since I like their Farsi font. Maybe Arabs have a different taste. Are there many people thinking the same way?

Edit: I looked at a few samples. It seems like it fallsback to something unbearable in some occasions, but other than that, Farsi and Arabic fonts are basically the same.

[Nocifer]

Meanwhile I continue to use Microsoft TTF fonts which look spectacular.

Also, there's a nice add-on for Firefox called ReFont which allows to disable custom Web fonts which have infested the entire web. Windows 10 and 11 render them OK'ish (in classic applications) but FreeType/Pango continue to struggle hard with them, so I prefer not to see them at all.

Here's how I see this page in case people want to enjoy something warm, crisp and nice. Make sure you see this screenshot at 100% scale/magnification.

I'll concede that these MS fonts as displayed in the screenshot are a far cry from how ugly they used to be rendered in the Windows of old, but this is exactly the kind of font rendering I was always struggling to get away from back in the old, pre-Infinality Linux days. I like my fonts fatter and rounder and smoother; thin and square lines are a big no-no in my books.

The only fonts that truly matter:

$fc-match sans
arial.ttf: "Arial" "Regular"
$fc-match mono
consola.ttf: "Consolas" "Regular"
$fc-match serif
times.ttf: "Times New Roman" "Regular"

In case you wonder, fontconfig automatically pick them up if installed (on my distro at least).

Microsoft fonts, especially the old fonts like Arial and Times a) are ugly as Hell, b) are even uglier on Linux, and c) are full of rendering/hinting hacks that have no business on a modern PC with a modern font rendering stack. There's a reason even Microsoft has ditched them nowadays.

Consolas is a good font though. On the other hand, so are a great many of the hundreds of free mono fonts out there (not to mention the non-free ones).

Noto CJK has problem properly displaying apostrophe (upper line):

But with a slight modification (re Sarasa UI fonts, lowerr line), this problem can disappear

Huh. I've been using Noto CJK for years now and I'd never noticed this. I just tested it and you're right, but it only happens with the Noto CJK SC/HK/TC variants, aka the Chinese ones, not with the KR and JP ones. Weird, but I'd bet 100% fixable. I'd tell you to report it upstream, but I'd be really surprised if it's not been already reported.

Personally I prefer the M+ one, but Noto is a good default.

I was about to say the same thing. I'm a recent convert to the M+ fonts, they're really nice and just like the Noto fonts they cover a great deal of non-Latin writing scripts (which is a non-negotiable requirement in every part of the world except the USA, and every default font that only supports Latin scripts should be tossed in a fire to burn, along with the morons who decided to make it a default in the first place - yes Cantarell and GNOME, I'm looking at you).