Forum font

The FreeBSD site has a very ugly font in Firefox. Up to now it's the only site that is so ugly. Which font am I missing on my FreeBSD install?
 
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You can remove bitmap fonts (/usr/local/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf) or uncheck the option in Firefox to don't allow the pages to chose their own fonts.

ff-fnt05.png
 
The CSS of the Forum tells to use:
font-family: 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Fira Sans', 'Droid Sans', sans-serif
Segoe UI comes with MS software and I doubt that this can be legally installed on FreeBSD. Helvetica Neue and Helvetica are expensive commercial fonts which come as a gift only with macOS. The first „free“ one (like in free beer) is Roboto and like Ubuntu it is part of x11-fonts/google-fonts. Oxygen is in x11-fonts/oxygen-fonts, Cantarell is in x11-fonts/cantarell-fonts, Fira Sans is in x11-fonts/fira and finally you want to find out yourself where the Droid’s font might be.
 
Thank you very much. A lot of those fonts I had installed on my Linux boxes. FreeBSD comes without. That explains a lot. I’ll install them.
 
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You can select the font to use under Preferences in Firefox which will list the fonts you already have on FreeBSD. No need to install new ones.
 
You can select the font to use under Preferences in Firefox which will list the fonts you already have on FreeBSD. No need to install new ones.
I know that but it does not work for this forum. I get ugly fonts. After installing some fonts, mentioned earlier, the side renders well.
 
Thank you very much. A lot of those fonts I had installed on my Linux boxes. FreeBSD comes without. That explains a lot. I’ll install them.
Ohhhh, thank you so much. This is such a good advice. I installed a whole bunch of fonts, and everything is now looking so much better on the internets, including FreeBSD forums.

Why would FreeBSD not bundle the fonts? It seems they are so integral to user experience, especially desktop users. Crivens cracauer@ since there's a major desktop push, this really needs to be addressed. My desktop experience was so bad until I realized I'm missing a whole bunch of fonts months later.
 
Why would FreeBSD not bundle the fonts?
Because thats how it should be. FreeBSD is not the only one. Arch Linux, Void Linux, Artix Linux, Chimera, OpenBSD...none of them are installing fonts by default. Some desktop environments like KDE Plasma and Gnome have them as dependency and they install them automatically but thats not going to work for all regions like China, Korea, India. Unless you install complete noto fonts set which is more than 2GB in size. If i want to setup a FreeBSD server, i dont want 2GB of uneccessary fonts.
 
I hate when people describe fonts as ugly. Ugly is subjective. Are they ugly, but the correct fonts? Or are they the wrong fonts? And do the fonts look roughly the same on other browsers or is it just Firefox? If you override the font in the Firefox settings with something else do you get a better result?
Ok, ok, FreeBSD is not barebones as Arch Linux, not a good comparison. OpenBSD is not getting into desktop business.
It's more than FreeBSD doesn't commit to a given look or setup as much as Linux does. It's part of how we can get away with having only a few major choices versus the thousands of Linux Distros and the culture of hopping between distros until you find one that does everything you like with as few annoyances as possible. It's also part of why it's so rare to have to outright reinstall FreeBSD versus Linux as it's trivial to uninstall every user installed package or port and all the user configurations and start from scratch if you really need to.
 
Ok, ok, FreeBSD is not barebones as Arch Linux, not a good comparison.
What do you mean its not bare bones as Arch? They are literally same. You get nothing with FreeBSD base install. And you get nothing with Arch base install.
OpenBSD is not getting into desktop business.
I use it as desktop os and it works flawlessly. In fact, until recently, i was unable to use FreeBSD because it has inferior graphics card support. And this is not about who gets into what business. Whatever that means. Linux distros i mentioned above and all BSDs can be used as desktop operating systems. And if you are going to use them as such, you need to at least know the basics. How to install essential components like audio system, fonts, desktop environments, network managers...etc. Just because it was not obvious to you, doesnt mean it should be included in default install. Go to LFS forums and tell them their distro is retarded because you need to build it from scratch. Comon man...
I hate when people describe fonts as ugly. Ugly is subjective. Are they ugly, but the correct fonts? Or are they the wrong fonts? And do the fonts look roughly the same on other browsers or is it just Firefox? If you override the font in the Firefox settings with something else do you get a better result?
When people say ugly fonts, that usually means they didnt install basic system fonts. Beginer error.
It's more than FreeBSD doesn't commit to a given look or setup as much as Linux does. It's part of how we can get away with having only a few major choices versus the thousands of Linux Distros and the culture of hopping between distros until you find one that does everything you like with as few annoyances as possible. It's also part of why it's so rare to have to outright reinstall FreeBSD versus Linux as it's trivial to uninstall every user installed package or port and all the user configurations and start from scratch if you really need to.
There are distros out there with ZFS support offering same snapshot capabilities like FreeBSD. And they also have BTRFS that supports snapshots. Not to mention immutable monstrocities that can not be broken by total beginers.
Other than desktop users, no one needs fancy fonts and they just take up space and need care.
This guy gets it.
 
What do you mean its not bare bones as Arch? They are literally same. You get nothing with FreeBSD base install. And you get nothing with Arch base install.
FreeBSD has a more or less standard POSIX/SUS userland. This includes C compiler, make, nfs, etc, so being a full operating system, is not entirely bare bones thankfully but actually quite well thought out and planned (though PkgBase will likely reduce this capability in the coming years).

ArchLinux, being Linux has a completely random minimal install that is small-ish but essentially is whatever dependencies coreutils, systemd and others drags in that month. Some months, the dependencies in the minimal install aren't all contained in the 'core' repo either but bleed out into 'extra' too. A mess.

Bare-bones is essentially u-boot, kernel, busybox. Alpine is perhaps the closest to that.
 
FreeBSD has a more or less standard POSIX/SUS userland. This includes C compiler, make, nfs, etc, so being a full operating system, is not entirely bare bones thankfully.

ArchLinux, being Linux has a completely random minimal install that is small-ish but essentially is whatever dependencies coreutils, systemd and others drags in that month. Some months, the dependencies in the minimal install aren't all contained in the 'core' repo either but bleed out into 'extra' too. A mess.

Bare-bones is essentially u-boot, kernel, busybox. Alpine is perhaps the closest to that.
When i say bare bones, i mean neither one of them include xorg, desktop environments, fonts and other garbage. You comparison is extreme. I used Alpine as desktop. Works well too.
 
When i say bare bones, i mean neither one of them include xorg, desktop environments, fonts and other garbage. You comparison is extreme. I used Alpine as desktop. Works well too.
Alpine is possibly the only (non-embedded) Linux I would consider.
I wish they would fix the xf86-input-* packages so eudev doesn't need to be sprayed over the filesystem in place of mdev. The boot-hooks are messy.

Yeah, a server-capable OS that pulls in xorg, mir, wayland, arcan, etc by default would be annoying. Even RHEL server installs having plymouth in the default is asinine.

Edit: FreeBSD does actually provide a surprising number of fonts in the base install. Including classics like gallant (Solaris) and spleen (OpenBSD).
 
Alpine is possibly the only (non-embedded) Linux I would consider.
I would daily drive it on some of my older machines if their setup-desktop script included more desktop environments like Cinnamon. I dont like Plasma and Gnome, and everything else has poor 4K support. And that drives me nuts. For now, Alpine is running all my containers and there is nothing like it.
I wish they would fix the xf86-input-* packages so eudev doesn't need to be sprayed over the filesystem in place of mdev. The boot-hooks are messy.
ZFS support would be nice. Chimera and Void have it and its easy to setup.
Yeah, a server-capable OS that pulls in xorg, mir, wayland, arcan, etc by default would be annoying. Even RHEL server installs having plymouth in the default is asinine.
My point exactly. RHEL is cancer. I have PTSD from it.
 
My opinions only.
Fonts are very personal. What looks good to me on my displays may look like crap to you on your displays.
"Designers" (again my experience) tend to choose "pretty" fonts that are unreadable to my old eyes.
But what to do?
In theory, font sub in the same size and "type" (serif, san-serif, mono) should render at least readable, but change anything and the page renders jumbled/unreadable.
I set "minimum size" that can muck up some pages. I change default zoom from 100% to 110% to make it easier on my eyes, again mucks up page rendering

I'm not a UI/UX/WebPage guy, so I don't know what the right answer is
 
I would daily drive it on some of my older machines if their setup-desktop script included more desktop environments like Cinnamon.
Apologies for the slight off-topic: I never quite got the point of the setup-desktop script.

For example here: <https://github.com/alpinelinux/alpine-conf/blob/master/setup-desktop.in#L143>

Those three lines (add display server, add gnome, enable gdm) really could just be a single command. Especially since apk has --depends enabled by default.

And worse, xfce, lxde, sway packages that get pulled in aren't even the upstream default lists but a random concoction of packages. Its all a bit gross.

But, yes, I much prefer this to it all being hidden behind anaconda's cruft in the RHEL installer.

Fonts are very personal. What looks good to me on my displays may look like crap to you on your displays.
I do tend to agree. What OpenBSD do is very risky. Spleen, compiled into the kernel and size dependent entirely on screen size. Strangely, it always seems about right, even if L,l and 1 are a little difficult to discern in the font style.
 
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My opinions only.
Fonts are very personal. What looks good to me on my displays may look like crap to you on your displays.
"Designers" (again my experience) tend to choose "pretty" fonts that are unreadable to my old eyes.
But what to do?
Good point. You cant make everyone happy. Current "solution" works best in my opinion. Dont include anything. Keep number of packages as low as possible, install only essentials. Simple as that.
In theory, font sub in the same size and "type" (serif, san-serif, mono) should render at least readable, but change anything and the page renders jumbled/unreadable.
I set "minimum size" that can muck up some pages. I change default zoom from 100% to 110% to make it easier on my eyes, again mucks up page rendering

I'm not a UI/UX/WebPage guy, so I don't know what the right answer is
There is no right answer. Do what works for you.
Apologies for the slight off-topic: I never quite got the point of the setup-desktop script.

For example here: <https://github.com/alpinelinux/alpine-conf/blob/master/setup-desktop.in#L143>

Those three lines (add display server, add gnome, enable gdm) really could just be a single command. Especially since apk has --depends enabled by default.
Not quite. They also install elogind which is essential for some desktop environments that depend on systemd because there is no systemd in Alpine.
And worse, xfce, lxde, sway packages that get pulled in aren't even the upstream default lists but a random concoction of packages. Its all a bit gross.

But, yes, I much prefer this to it all being hidden behind anaconda's cruft in the RHEL installer.
You should try Guix or the newcomer Chimera.
 
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When people say ugly fonts, that usually means they didnt install basic system fonts. Beginer error.
It might be the people that I hang around with, but I hear far more people complaining about the intentionally used fonts in various things being ugly than wrong fonts.

It may well be that that's what the OP meant, but if nobody bothers to ask any follow up questions, then how do you know? If the intentional fonts are ugly, there's a way of addressing that which is different than if the fonts weren't properly loading for one reason or another which if often times different from if it's just one browser that's failing to properly render the fonts.

I'm not always as consistent about it as I'd like, but it is important to at least know what the problem is before trying to fix it.
 
I would still like to know which pkg these fonts are in.

It's not all or nothing. The font requested by the forum is probably very common across the web.
 
A lot of sites are now in the 'just leave it alone" category. That is, they leave the font at "system-ui". We started doing that at my web dev company and it works well because the user is used to what his phone, tablet, or computer's system font is and we don't touch that.

Of course that can't work in all situations. We were promoting theater and film so a font can promote a mood and we had to honor that.
 
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