MicroBlogPost: fonts i currently use
july 15, 2022 (updated: june 26, 2023)
I thought I'd share what fonts I currently use for my system and such. This is an old post from before the site rewrite, all the images are missing. I figured I'd put something in the blog not to leave it empty.
main fonts
System UI sans-serif: Cantarell
Cantarell is GNOME’s default font. I would prefer to use Inter, but a bug makes Inter not look so great in some GTK. I’ve gotten used to how Cantarell looks with this bug, and any other fonts look broken with it.
Document sans-serif: Inter
Inter is a lovely and readable sans-serif font. I use it for most documents and UIs I make since it’s so nice you never think of it.
Code editor monospace: Comic Code
I’m not sure what it is about Comic Code, but it’s so quick and easy to read. I use it for my terminal, code editor and as the code highlighting font in Discord
System UI monospace: SF Pro Mono
Comic Code doesn’t fit in all scenarios however, so my system’s preferred monospace font is SF Pro Mono. Just like Inter it’s so nice you never think of it, it’s innoffensive and simple.
Web serif: Nimbus Roman
As a serif font I chose Nimbus Roman. It’s very similar to Times New Roman on Windows, so unstyled websites look as they would to someone on Windows.
Display serif: Playfair
I like Playfair because it has optical sizing, therefore titles dont look too bold and thin strokes aren’t unreadable when tiny
Emoji: Noto Color Emoji
I love Apple’s emoji set, but using it as a system font on Linux is a bit of a pain. Noto Color Emoji has great coverage and works really nicely on Linux so I use it instead. For those who absolutely want to use Apple’s emoji on Linux, noto-fonts-emoji-apple bypases many of the pitfalls of using the official TTF by replacing the glyphs in Noto Color Emoji with Apple’s
Fallback fonts
Sometimes fonts don’t have every glyph in the universe, and other times I can’t be bothered downloading a proprietary font in a development virtual machine
Monospace:
My fallbacks for monospace fonts are Source Code Pro, Noto Sans Mono and Unifont. I also use Cascadia Code, Rec Mono Linear and IBM Plex Mono when I’m feeling different.
Sans-serif and serif:
I fall back to Noto Sans or Noto Serif respectively. They both contain support for many languages including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. A great alternative to Inter for Korean characters is Pretendard.