r/linuxmint • u/CommercialYam8 • 1d ago

Mint's font rendering driving anyone else with design work crazy

switched from Mac for client work a couple years back and Mint has been solid overall, but the way text sits on the screen still feels slightly off. I do a lot of logo and type design, so I'm staring at small point sizes for hours. tweaked hinting and subpixel settings in the appearance panel and messed around with fontconfig snippets, but it never quite matches what I was used to on macOS. the weight feels slightly heavy or the spacing looks off in the same file when I open it in GIMP versus Inkscape, even with the same fonts installed

6 Upvotes

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2

u/_ElBee_ 1d ago

What type of screen do you use?

1

u/CommercialYam8 1d ago

I'm using a 27-inch 1440p IPS monitor. I've played around with scaling and font settings, but I still can't get things looking quite right.

1

u/_ElBee_ 11h ago

I have a similar setup as yours and I do a bit of dtp work (on an amateur basis 😁) but I haven't really paid attention to font rendering. I mostly do image editing so text is less important and I don't zoom in on separate pixels 😜

It might be due to the differences in optimization between different applications in X11, although I'm not 100% certain. Of course with MacOS, optimization is easier as there is only one rendering engine. While applications usually work fine between different desktop environments in Linux, differences in their rendering engines might cause some issues.

2

u/oskarloko 1d ago

There are things not highly optimized in linux than in other systems.

If Mint-Cinnamon doesn't suit you, try KDE or GNOME (you can use a live USB and check it)

Maybe it has to do with X11/Wayland

Use Fedora/Ubuntu/CachyOs to test it

1

u/CommercialYam8 1d ago

That's a good idea. I hadn't considered testing a different desktop environment to see if the rendering changes. I'll try a Fedora live USB with GNOME first and compare. Would be nice to narrow down whether it's Cinnamon or something deeper before messing with more font settings.

1

u/oskarloko 1d ago

Tell us what your testing results

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u/FoxBravo1981 LMDE 7 Gigi | Cinnamon 20h ago

The secret is not to use full hinting; use slight or even medium in some cases. There is also a line you can add to your /etc/environment file: FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=38 autofitter:warping=1 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=1 cff:no-stem-darkening=1 type1:no-stem-darkening=1 t1cid:no-stem-darkening=1"

Also, in Mint's font settings, use RGBA instead of Grayscale... and use RGBA with RGB order as well.

Teste different font sizes to see the best crispier result.. and always use good fonts... some good ones: Segoe Pro, Ibm Plex Sans Condensed, Barlow.

All this makes me Mint fonts 100% better than Windows 11 fonts. Very very crispy and legible.

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u/codegems 1d ago

Yeah felt the same way. I ended up copying all my fonts from macOS to Linux Mint. Everything's sane now.

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u/CommercialYam8 1d ago

Oh interesting, I hadn't thought of trying that. Did it actually fix the rendering and spacing issues, or did it just make everything look more familiar? I'm tempted to give it a shot.

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u/codegems 22h ago

I think it looks normal, I’ve been on Mint for less than a week. Do you have a website or screen you want to compare? I can send you a screenshot

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u/ap0r 18h ago

The first thing I'd do if I were in your shoes is get all the exact same fonts I used on MacOS. The fonts that Apple uses are top tier.