How To: Improve Font Rendering in Gnome?

General system
1

Greetings lovely community,

I switched to EndeavourOS Gnome from PopOS and one thing I’ve noticed that is different is the font rendering. I understand EOS doesn’t config the fonts like some other distros might and that’s fine, but when I change my fonts via Gnome Tweaks tool to the same fonts that I used in PopOS, it still doesn’t quite look the same in my GTK apps like Files, Tilix, or even when I use Vivaldi. When I compare my EOS fonts with apps I use, to some screenshots I took when I was on PopOS, the fonts ALMOST match up, but the EOS ones just don’t look as nice and/or as smooth.The fonts in EOS just look slightly squished just a pixel or two, but enough that it’s noticeable to affect the readability. If I use the same fonts shouldn’t it look exactly the same between either distro? Is there any package I could install to get font rendering to look how I’d like it to in PopOS or some config file that I have to create or edit perhaps to achieve this? Is it even possible or am I kind of out of luck with this idea? Thanks again for any help, you all have been very helpful for resolving my questions so far and I appreciate it very much!

These are the fonts I’m using right now in case it helps (same fonts and sizes as on PopOS):
Screenshot from 2021-07-27 21-58-02

System specs: Acer Aspire i5-core E5-576G-5762 Laptop

[scott@endeavourOS ~]$ inxi -Fxxxza --no-host
System:
  Kernel: 5.10.53-1-lts x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts 
  root=UUID=2c6a8f39-939c-47a4-9d95-dabf69e6f5c6 rw nvidia-drm.modeset=1 
  quiet loglevel=3 nowatchdog 
  Desktop: GNOME 40.3 tk: GTK 3.24.30 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM 40.0 
  Distro: EndeavourOS base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire E5-576G v: V1.32 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: KBL model: Ironman_SK v: V1.32 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.32 
  date: 10/24/2017 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 18.2 Wh (100.0%) condition: 18.2/62.2 Wh (29.3%) 
  volts: 12.7 min: 11.1 model: PANASONIC AS16B5J type: Li-ion 
  serial: <filter> status: Full 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-8250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 8E (142) stepping: A (10) 
  microcode: EA cache: L2: 6 MiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 28800 
  Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 
  3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 
  v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917 class-ID: 0300 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP108M [GeForce MX150] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: nvidia v: 470.57.02 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus-ID: 01:00.0 
  chip-ID: 10de:1d10 class-ID: 0302 
  Device-3: Chicony HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:3 
  chip-ID: 04f2:b571 class-ID: 0e02 
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.12 compositor: gnome-shell driver: 
  loaded: modesetting,nvidia resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo> 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce MX150/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.57.02 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 
  chip-ID: 8086:9d71 class-ID: 0403 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.53-1-lts running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.32 running: no 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] driver: iwlwifi 
  v: kernel port: 4000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24fb class-ID: 0280 
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: N/A modules: r8169 port: 3000 
  bus-ID: 04:00.1 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 
  bus-ID: 1-5:2 chip-ID: 8087:0aa7 class-ID: e001 
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 125.97 GiB (52.8%) 
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFS256G39TND-N210A 
  size: 238.47 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B 
  speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1P10 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 237.97 GiB size: 233.17 GiB (97.99%) 
  used: 125.97 GiB (54.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 512 MiB size: 511 MiB (99.80%) 
  used: 296 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
  file: /swapfile 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 61.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 52 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 272 Uptime: 21h 37m wakeups: 7 Memory: 15.51 GiB 
  used: 4.73 GiB (30.5%) Init: systemd v: 249 tool: systemctl Compilers: 
  gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: 1205 pacman: 1198 lib: 287 flatpak: 7 Shell: Bash 
  v: 5.1.8 running-in: tilix inxi: 3.3.05
2

These are the least things i know about as i don’t really bother much with fonts. I basically stick with what ever shows up. I’m also not a big gnome user either. It has to look pretty bad before i worry about messing with it. :grin:

3

I’m afraid I’m in the same boat as ricklinux. I don’t know much about this and I rarely take action unless font rendering is really bad and that’s not the case right now with my first and recent install of EndeavourOS. One thing I noticed in your screen capture is that you might try ticking “Subpixel (for LCD screens)” in Tweaks. I saw a bit of improvement with that. Good luck.

By the way, Pop OS does have some pretty fine font rendering. It’s a beauty. But EndeavourOS is much more fun.

1 Like
4

Try changing your antialiasing to subpixel rather than grayscale. Also running with some other fonts might help although that is a guess. If you have access to these: RGB, hinting slight, DPI 96. I don’t use Gnome but if it helps… :slightly_smiling_face:

5

This is a must:

1 Like
6

Am I into noticing this or what? Can you please expand on this topic? My fonts look fine but I would like to know more. Thanks @keybreak .

7

Sorry i can’t really expand anything more than what’s already written (and it’s impossible to capture on screenshot), but without it on most monitors should look like “weird / wrong” font rendering, you know…badly aliased glyphs, some weird rgb pixels around some letters…Just wrong.

It’s bad upstream defaults decisions at some point.

8

Yep true. Screenshots don’t really show anything anyway. Defaults sometimes suck. There are plenty of good examples for that but don’t get me started on a whole bunch of topics! :wink:

1 Like
9

Has anyone here ever followed this guide for improving font rendering. FYI, it’s a Manjaro wiki, so I’m a little bit hesitant to use a different distros wiki instructions which is meant for their own system than EnOS, unless the process would be the same done in any other Arch-based distro. Would this be worth something to try or avoided I wonder? I don’t want to tinker too much that I end up making this worse, so it’s not mission critical that I try this, but definitely wondering if anyone else has or considers it safe to give it a try. Also, I wonder if I did it, would it be easy to revert the changes if I wanted to go back?

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Improve_Font_Rendering

10

It doesn’t look too far out there - for any Linux system (not just Arch-based). Note that it refers to the Archwiki at the end! As to the specifics of what it is setting, I agree with the settings, but have never used the method as described - it can all be done in my XFCE GUI, and SHOULD be doable in Gnome GUI from what I recall back in the day…

1 Like
11

Scotty_Trees, I just tried out the font tweaks on Manjaro Gnome (latest stable) and it worked noticeably well. I found that fonts before the tweaks were a bit thin and faint in places. After the tweaks they are more uniform and easier to read. I’m no font expert so I can’t offer you a more technical appraisal but I observed differences in Evolution’s mail and calendar windows, Gnome Files and especially at the Distrowatch website in Firefox. I’ll apply the tweaks late next week on EOS. I don’t expect results to be any different.

1 Like
12

Ping me next week for when you do the EnOS results, I shall look forward to it! And happy to hear the link I provided helped improve the fonts on your Manjaro system :slight_smile:

13

Best way to have better fonts. Use KDE! :laughing:

1 Like
14

I’m gonna assume you didn’t read the posts title OR you just really enjoy talking to me, hehe.
On a side note, how do you mute someone? Asking for no reason :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Just having a little font fun. :crazy_face:

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16

Or Pop OS :slight_smile:

17

Unexpectedly found some time to try out the font tweaks in EOS. Looks great! Give it a try, Scotty_Trees.

1 Like
18

Forgot to give you some proper thanks…
…Thanks, Scotty_Trees.

1 Like