UI fonts in 23.04 look bad compared to 22.10

[Marc Deslauriers]

The new version of fonts-ubuntu is causing the UI font to be very thin and some characters appear worse than they did in 22.10.

Here is a screenshot of Kinetic (top) vs Lunar (bottom). The 8 in particular is just painful to look at.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I prefer the old font too, but I think this is a design decision that's probably here to stay. We have two workarounds on the way:

1. The ability to install the old "legacy" Ubuntu font side-by-side.

2. The ability to change the font weight in GNOME Tweaks (bug 2019906 needs fixing).

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

While users can possibly change the font back, this bug isn't really about which font the default should be, as that is subjective.

This bug is about the fact that the new font appears misrendered, giving the default desktop an unpolished look.

The "8" in the date part of the screenshot above looks like it's smaller than the "2" beside it, and the middle of it looks like it's missing pixels.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

No problem. Please open a separate issue for each specific rendering problem upstream at: https://github.com/canonical/Ubuntu-fonts/issues