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Back to font
Having switched over to Linux Mint from Windows, I was a bit surprised by how bad some websites look – I’m using Vivaldi and Firefox.
I thought the web had moved to web pages that can display their own fonts, even if they’re not installed on your computer. It seems that, for some reason, browsers in Linux continue with their ugly standard serif font, even if I load the same page in Windows using the same browser. It seems Windows runs the Verdana font but in Linux it reverts to whatever serif it is, which looks awful.
Mathew Tanner
A different-looking font can make a website look entirely different.
Neil says… I’m not an expert at web design and CSS ins and outs, but I think this is an interesting outcome of designing for the most-accessed platform, or just the platform the designer is using – likely Windows or Mac OS. Also, most Linux distros only ship with open source fonts. There’s a Microsoft web font pack you can grab (here’s one guide: https://itsfoss.com/install-microsoft-fontsubuntu) that might solve the default font looking odd. The Google open source replacements do tend to look indistinguishable, but that’s not to say any distros include those by default.