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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."

3 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Use georgia ... by kousik · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... and courier. After 2 yrs of experiments I found them to make the best combination.

  2. personal preference by Satai · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I always use Konqueror with Bitstream Charter, Bitstream Courier, Adobe Times and Adobe Helvetica.

    In addition, I've found that my eyes are accustomed to having fonts with smaller spaces and no hinting, so with Xft1 I compiled with the xft-quality patch from Keith Packard, and for Xft2 I compile with the spacing part applied and then manually set /etc/fonts/fonts.conf to turn off hinting on the Bitstream fonts.

  3. Verdana,Arial,Helvetica size=-1 by Tom7 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been using face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica" size=-1 for a few years, and that seems to work right in the default install of all the computers I use. (My school's sun lab included.) Arial looks really bad in Mozilla on linux.

    Also, do yourself a favor and use CSS. I use this, which also displays text at the right size on Macs (which like to make fonts smaller when browsing the web):

    P { font: 11px Verdana,Arial,Helvetica }

    I can't say much for what the "right way" to do this is without offending those folks who believe the web should not have any markup for design.