Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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