First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

"Un s a ve d D o cu m e n t 1 - g e d it"... Maybe the kerning is the next thing to improve

The kerning on the 'i' is off (look at the 'B' 'i' pair), the upper 'I' is indistinct, the ascender on the lower 'l' is grotesquely higher than the cap height (look at 'P' 'l'), and the lower 't' and 's' look like the bastard children of Eurostile. I think it's a mess.<p>There's a reason everyone tweaks Bitstream Vera; it works. Novelty sans fonts aren't the reason Linux typography sucks.

Great to see! Along the same lines, can anyone shed any light on why Gnome's settings for padding around UI elements is set to such a high value? (compare to OS X, which has very minimal padding around most UI elements).

The font looks too Star-Trekkie, somewhat Romulan in fact. Nice for a logo, but sucks to see that on all the windows.<p>Remember Nautilus? There was a particular version of Ubuntu that shipped where Nautilus folder doubleclicks kept opening new windows rather than using the same window. DID NOT WANT. And unfortunately Ubuntu shipped with that. The community pushed it back, and so in the next release they knocked that off. So let's hope they don't ship this font as the standard default font.<p>I appreciate them trying to improve the interface, but forcing everyone from right closing windows to left was too drastic in 10.04 LTS. I quickly reverted back to Clearlooks.

That really is quite pleasing to look at. And as the article mentions, it matches up against the type in the Ubuntu logo nicely. Take note of the 'u', the 'n' and the 'a'.

It is such a small thing, but the font rendering quality has always prevented me from enjoying Linux. I read so much while on the computer the horrible rendering and kerning just nag at me until I don't feel like reading anything else until I switch OS's.

<i>closed beta</i><p>Wait, what?

Anyone know if Dalton Maag is making a serif font, as well? Despite the long lived computer love affair with sans, serif is becoming more important with higher resolution screens (think Retina Display).

When someone talks about Linux problems with fonts rendering now, I get really confused. I worked on Win/Mac/Linux (currently using Macbook and Ubuntu Desktop) and I have to say Linux has the best font rendering. Compare this:<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113891/pics/font_rendering_linux.png" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113891/pics/font_rendering_linux.png</a> <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113891/pics/font_rendering_macosx.png" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113891/pics/font_rendering_macosx.pn...</a>

Can someone provide a download to the actual file? I'd love to play around with it, without jumping through hoops on launchpad with openid and such. Anyone have it or have easy access to it?

It's beautiful. Despite the flaws, it warms my heart to see that someone is actually taking interface fonts seriously on Linux. I share the controversial belief that games and software are far too obvious to be the reason why Windows got ahead. I think it is the attention to everyday details like fonts, that made Windows more popular.