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Web-safe fonts for linux viewers

Posted By Scott Klarr on Feb 29, 2008 at 4:07 am

As a website developer, one of the first things that I noticed when I switched over to Linux as my primary operating system, is that the default fonts available are quite different than the set I was used to in Windows. This, unfortunately, causes a lot of webpages to render as something resembling a pile of shit.

You can install windows fonts onto your own linux distro to make browsing more enjoyable when viewing sites designed with windows proprietary fonts in mind, however if you are making a website, you should always think about making your site enjoyable for those who may not have special fonts installed. You can do this by specifying alternate fonts to be used in your css with the font-family property.

I was going to go through the trouble of making a font comparisons list between windows and linux, however i found this excellent post that covers it fairly well: Linux Font Equivalents To Popular Web Typefaces

One thing to keep in mind though, is that not all linux distros contain the same fonts by default, which complicates this issue even more. For instance, a few of the fonts listed in that blog post for Ububtu are not in my Mandriva distro. Regardless, its a good reference to bookmark.

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