Font Rendering
I thought i'd do a quick comparison of the font rendering in Windows XP and Ubuntu. When I started using ubuntu, I felt that the fonts seemed below par with their windows counterparts. However, after logging back into windows, I saw its fonts with a more critical view.
Click on the thumb for a visual comparison.
My initial view of the small font rendering in Ubuntu was that the fonts appeared too thin and weak. The side by side comparison certainly shows this in my opinion. The font edges in Windows Cleartype appear smoother, and have a stronger contrast with the background. I'd lean towards Windows Cleartype for small font rendering.
However, large font rendering is a different story. Ubuntu's fonts are very smooth on the edges, whereas Windows Cleartype is a little grainy in areas. Ubuntu gets my vote for large font rendering.
On balance, as the vast majority of text I read on the net is small, i'd have to lean towards Windows for overall font rendering quality. Although in reality there's not that much difference between the two.
I'm curious, does everyone else get similar results on their machines?
posted by Chris at 1:56 PM
6 Comments:
Patent issues prevent some distro vendors from compiling freetype2 with the bytecode interpreter enabled. This changes the quality of the rendering, and some folks prefer freetype2 when the bytecode interpreter is enabled.
Also, make sure you're comparing exactly the same fonts - copy your Windows fonts to your Ubuntu system so you're comparing like with like.
9:34 PM
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12:27 AM
I should have explained this. Both the Ubuntu and Windows test was using Times New Roman true type font, so yes it's a like for like comparison.
I know nothing of the nuances of this 'freetype' you refer to, but I guess from my standpoint it was interesting to compare how these fonts look by default in their respective operating system. Afterall, us newbies rarely move away from default settings, through lack of expertise or outright fear of blowing something up!
Anyways, i've seen dramatically different font rendering on other linux systems, which is why I throw the question out to other people - am I getting fairly good results compared to other people?
12:28 AM
Freetype is the font renderer portion of X-Windows that allows it to use TrueType fonts. Freetype has the capability of displaying fonts in such a way as to look as good as they do on Windows, but there's some patent issues on this functionality. So, it's usually disabled. Here is a good reference for how to get it working right in Ubuntu, though.
1:13 AM
Usually I find fonts on Linux are more readable and well-antialiased than on Windows. Usually on Windows fonts looks pixelized, quite crappy.
11:50 PM
Have you tried gnome-font-properties? (also in preferences menu somewhere as 'Font' ... I've never used menus only terminals ...). You can adjust some rendering settings ...
3:33 AM
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