Screen Fonts For The Win 2025: My choices for readability

I experience sans serif suffering and the lack of consistency in fixed width font choices. Given multiple systems installations in multiple GNU/Linux environments, this post serves as a personal reminder to myself; maybe someone else will benefit.

Best monospaced (fixed width) font

Consolas Regular 10.5

Runner up:

Andale Mono Regular 10.5

Why 10.5? Interestingly, I've noticed that Consolas Regular 10 is significantly smaller when rendered than Andale Mono Regular 10. When I bump the rendering up to 10.5 point, the size of Andale Mono doesn't change, but Consolas does increase slightly. Andale Mono renders with extremely crisp and clean thin lines. Consolas looks just slightly "fatter" and is easier for me to read. 

Best sans serif (and default font)

Noto Sans 16

Runner up:

DejaVu Sans 16

Noto Sans scales well and doesn't waste space between ascenders and decenders. 

Best serif font

Google/ Sorkin Merriweather

Runners Up:

Adobe Source Serif Pro 

DejaVu Serif

In my experience, serif fonts that are supposedly used for screen reading tend to be obnoxiously tall / skinny. DejaVu Serif offers very uncrowded letters and is very legible on screens at larger sizes but at smaller sizes the height of the characters begins to suffer with much wasted screen real estate. Source Serif Pro is quite well balanced -- although I do wish it was slightly wider. A balance between Source Serif and DejaVu Serif was welcomed by this author, and Merriweather fits the bill.

I've screen tested other options, including Atkinson Hyperlegible (which I do VERY much like at higher font sizes but not at small ones). Noto Serif is just too skinny/tall.

Fixing fontconfig for proper rendering of Microsoft fonts

This post is more of a reminder / howto to *me* and is lifted from stefan.angrick's blog.

This, in particular, applies to Cambria and Calibri.

If it doesn't already exist, create a file fonts.conf in the directory ~/.config/fontconfig/  That file will need to contain the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
      <bool>false</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

PC-BSD 9 -> FreeBSD Notes

I've been using PC-BSD 9 for a while, and I got sick of having only PBI (push-button installer) software installed, opting for a more traditional BSD experience of dependency hell. Here are a few tips for the uninitiated (notes for noobs) -- to help you get away from PC-BSD PBI updates and into FreeBSD source-centric happiness.

1. Use portmaster to upgrade packages. It's really the way to go. In order to get portmaster, you can use the command: portupgrade -PN portmaster
2. The first time you upgrade your packages, browse /usr/ports/UPDATING. When you update your packages, this is the first place to look when something doesn't compile. After you finish with your update, NOTE THE DATE OF THE UPDATE somewhere. That way, the next time you upgrade packages, you don't have to look through the entire /usr/ports/UPDATING file.
3. Accelerate your life. Tell FreeBSD to find and use the fastest mirror site:
1. portmaster ports-mgmt/fastest_sites
2. /usr/local/bin/fastest_sites > /usr/local/etc/ports_sites.conf
3. echo '.include "/usr/local/etc/ports_sites.conf"' >> /etc/make.conf
4. PERL updates are funky. When updating PERL, you'll need to update the many PERL packages that are already installed on your system. The p5-XML-SAX- packages are temperamental because p5-XML-SAX-Expat modifies a file that is contained in p5-XML-Parser. I haven't bothered to understand the problem well enough to write a definitive tutorial here. You'll also need to update all p5- ports, as well as print/foomatic-db-engine because it, too, contains a PERL package.
   
   
5. Make your fonts pretty. Everyone uses LCDs these days, so go download some patches to better support your eyeballs. The patches at https://github.com/paranormal/freebsd_fonts_ubuntu allow FreeBSD to use subpixel antialiasing. The only port that I needed to patch in order to make both Firefox and LibreOffice look beautiful was the freetype2 package.
6. Update your kernel for the latest fixes. If you decide to update your kernel (at this point, there are lots of bugfixes in 9-STABLE), try SVN: 
1. svn checkout svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/stable/9 /usr/STABLE
2. mv /usr/src /usr/RELEASE
3. ln -s /usr/STABLE /usr/src
7. Do all your configs at once. When using the Makefiles in /usr/ports/..., all you need to do is make config-recursive. portmaster apparently does this by default; I haven't yet figured out how to cause the tool to prompt with all of the configs (maybe using the -P option has something to do with this).

Firefox 4.0 Beta 10 has AWFUL font rendering!

Wow. Just took FF beta 10 for a test-drive, and I have got to say, the font rendering is awful. Look at a screenshot of Chrome vs. Firefox:




This may not look like a big deal in such a small sample, but trust me, after browsing for a few minutes, the eye strain was unbearable.

At this rate, I'm pretty sure that IE9 will regain market share after FF4 is released.