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Best Fonts for Linux Browsers?

Posted by Cliff on from the what's-easier-on-your-eyes dept.

BladeMelbourne asks: "As a web developer with a healthy love of Linux, I was wondering which fonts look great in Linux web browsers (particularly Mozilla/Netscape). Using 'Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif' just doesn't look nice. Do different distro's have different fonts? Which fonts resemble Arial/Helvetica? Which fonts are anti-aliased? Speaking of anti-aliased, does anyone know concisely how to get AA fonts with Mozilla on RedHat 8.0? I have my TTFs working, but don't seem to display correcly and look rather ugly on my display."

4 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Please do just one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You say you are a web developer, so please pick those fonts out for yourself and just for yourself. Don't pick fonts for me, I like the ones I already have thanks.

    1. Re:Please do just one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Default fonts are usually serif, which have readability problems at small size, and as most people don't and can't change their fonts you should help them around this problem for small sizes.

  2. So why's this still an issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I may be trolling in this, but I've always wondered why this is an issue at all? Why hasn't someone taken the time to make the UI more User-Friendly?

    Before anyone says: Quit bitching and do it yourself, I can't. I'm an EE. I know about microcode and circuit design. I have a job. It takes up my time. I refuse to work on work at home; Home is for relaxation.

    Oh, and whatever happened to unifying all these various hacks into one standardized way of doing things. How many ways are there to enable anti-aliased fonts? How many ways are there to make the text readable?

    END RANT

  3. Verdana by blwrd · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Both Verdana and Tahoma are great fonts. Personally I prefer Verdana a bit more as for me it seems to be more readable in small size.
    But then again, when you do your website, it is usually enough to define the font family that you want to be used, rather than the exact font.
    Althought my magick line in css is usually
    font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
    .. to prefer that verdana bit more over other sans-serif fonts. :)