Ubuntu – Chrome/Chromium fonts look bad starting from version 37

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After an upgrade from version 36 to 37, the fonts in Google Chrome browser and its opensource variation Chromium look much worse. In the attached screenshot you will the same page viewed with version 37 (left) and 36 (right). The fonts on the left are visible fatter and fuzzier than in Chromium. Any way to fix it?

Screenshot: fonts rendering comparison, Google Chrome (left) and Chromium (right)

UPDATE: I googled and found that starting with version 37 Google Chrome comes with a feature DirectWrite with is meant to improve font rendering for Windows users. It seems the font looks in Linux is also affected by this. However, on Linux there seems to be no way to disable this feature using chrome://flags. For now, I downgraded my browsers to a version prior to 37.

Best Answer

Ok, I am now able to use the newest version of Google Chrome without being annoyed at the fonts. I improved the fonts' visibility buy setting the hinting style to full:

Go to System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts
Configure anti-aliasing
Set hinting to full.
Close the window and reopen them again or log out and in again to see the change across the system.

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Ubuntu – After installing MS fonts, the fonts are still not the same as on windows

Ubuntu and windows use different font rendering techniques. Windows uses ClearType, and Ubuntu uses FreeType. These font renders produce quite different results, FreeType tends to produce fatter/bolder looking fonts and ClearType tends to produce thinner looking fonts.

As a web developer there is really nothing you can do about it except make sure the difference doesn't result in clipped text.

Ubuntu – Is Display flickering in Chrome/Chromium of Zenbook UX303UA with Google Plus

It's a bug in Xorg 1.18 that 16.04 ships with.

You can fix it like so:

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Paste this:

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Intel Graphics"
   Driver "intel"
   Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
   Option "TearFree" "true"
   Option "DRI" "3"
EndSection

Save (CTRL + O) and reboot.

Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/1586539 and https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=606152

If this does not work, try this:

sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-intel
sudo rm /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf (for those who created this file before)
reboot

If this also does not work, please install xserver-xorg-video-intel again.

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-intel

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – After installing MS fonts, the fonts are still not the same as on windows

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