GNOME 3 gets a new font [download]

By , Published November 6, 2010

GNOME 3 will ship with many exciting new features we already know about but here’s another to chalk up to the list: a new font!

The font, a ‘Humanist sans-serif’ family titled ‘Cantarell’, isn’t actually that new* – it’s already available as one of Google’s ‘web fonts’.

Paul Cutler, reporting on news from the Gnome Boston Summit, writes: -

"The new font is designed by David Crossland who is a big believer in open design and is also hosted on GNOME's git servers."

image

Download

You can download the font from the Gnome GIT servers using the links below.

*Thanks Colin!

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  3. The new Ubuntu font – how to download it
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  • Xorlathor

    The Gnome people seem to think you can just keep making new fonts and it’ll keep everyone happy. I’ll stick to Elementary, thank you very much.

    • Anonymous

      You seem to be confusing the GNOME platform with the Elementary design initiative. The latter depends on the former considerably.

      • Xorlathor

        I wasn’t referring to the platform itself, but the design (UI) of the platform. Elementary is based off of Gnome in the sense that it uses the platform, but it changes the UI completely.

        • Anonymous

          “The Gnome people seem to think you can just keep making new fonts and it’ll keep everyone happy. I’ll stick to Elementary, thank you very much”.Disregarding for a moment the absurdity of the notion that “the GNOME people” release fonts to somehow compensate for the shortcomings of their desktop environment and dissuade people from modifying GNOME with the Elementary themes and tweaks, you say all this as if “the Gnome people” weren’t actually doing anything worthwhile, which is most evidently wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I have no intention of dignifying your implied accusation with a rebuttal. You’re evidently quite ignorant of the matters about which you speak, which might explain your lack of gratitude, but there is still no excuse for such blatant disrespect.Perhaps you have problems distinguishing between what you know and what you think you know, but the fact that you’re ignorant about all the wonderful work done as part of the GNOME project must surely be obvious to even yourself, so instead of letting everybody else know just how little you know, why don’t you spend some time informing yourself on the subject?Once you have a better idea of what GNOME is, if you still want to criticize “the GNOME people”, please do so in the form of coherent and well founded arguments, not, as you’ve done here, in the form of sarcastic and vague insinuations.

          • Xorlathor

            It’s really quite amusing how seriously some people take a light-hearted comment on a blog. I can say what I want (as ignorant as I may be) and you don’t have to take such serious offence. I really think you could’ve better spent your time than writing a multi-paragraph response to my silly little remark.

          • Anonymous

            moron

          • daas88

            successful unintentional trolling

          • Anonymous

            I’m quite ready to believe that your comment wasn’t meant seriously. Not too long ago, being in a rather contrary mood, I made that very same mistake of posting something I really didn’t mean in a manner which I thought was humorous. What I forgot was that my comment would be read by people who neither knew me nor had any way of knowing what sort of mood I was in and that in the context it was quite natural to take my words seriously. I eventually realized this and promptly apologized.

            As regards your original post, it was not readily apparent to me nor, I suspect, to most other people that you did not mean what you wrote. Given the staggering number of people posting their ill-conceived remarks and opinions on the Internet, it should come as no surprise that people think you were being serious. The fact that you, in a manner that did not at all appear joking, made an attempt at clarifying your original statement in your answer to DeadSuperHero only affirmed the impression that you were in fact offering an honest, if poorly phrased, opinion.

            So, while I am sorry for being rather harsh in my last post, I ask that you view my reaction in light of what seemed to me an appropriate interpretation of your words. I would also like to say that I think it was somewhat rude of you to lecture me on how to spend my time. All I was doing was attempting to take you seriously. I could not know ahead of time that it would turn out to be a mistake.

            Lastly a comment to what you said about free speech. You correctly point out that you have the right to say what you want, irrespective of how much thought you have given to your words. However, I hope you understand that the price of making public statements, one that isn’t in any law but still is mandated by morality, is that you must be willing to accept responsibility for your words and that you must be ready to defend yourself from criticism.

          • Anonymous

            Since for some reason I cannot edit my other answer to your last post, I would just like to say that I erroneously clicked “like” to wilo108′s comment calling you a moron. I certainly do not agree and would never condone such language even if I did.

          • Xorlathor

            Cool, I liked wilo108′s comment too. It was accidental.

          • Xorlathor

            It’s really quite amusing how seriously some people take a light-hearted comment on a blog. I can say what I want (as ignorant as I may be) and you don’t have to take such serious offence. I really think you could’ve better spent your time than writing a multi-paragraph response to my silly little remark.

          • Xorlathor

            It’s really quite amusing how seriously some people take a light-hearted comment on a blog. I can say what I want (as ignorant as I may be) and you don’t have to take such serious offence. I really think you could’ve better spent your time than writing a multi-paragraph response to my silly little remark.

          • Anonymous

            Come on, what do you expect. Canonical have made a divide now, so the Ubuntu fanboys will get even worse thinking Ubuntu does all the work on the desktop, fixes all the bugs, innovates and makes new fonts.

    • Anonymous

      will be cool to see how elementary gets ported to gnome 3

    • Daniel Foré

      but elementary doesn’t have its own font :p I use droid-sans haha

  • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

    Dang, good spot!

  • Aldo Mann

    Cool, but it is not thoght to desktops.

  • Anonymous

    I like the ubuntu font better I think

    • Aldo Mann

      Yep, Ubuntu Sans is better than Cantarell for a working environment (Cantarell is really awful in sizes bellow 13px, but in big sizes it’s amazing. In contrast Ubuntu Sans is no “unique” , so I would never use it in not Ubuntu things.

      Even so, I prefer Droid Sans for a desktop, but it’s not usable in graphic design (it’s simply so UIish).

  • http://dejust.livejournal.com/ dejust

    What I was thinking:

    Canonical: Hey look, GNOME is bringing on that new shell, let’s make one on our own!

    GNOME: Hmm, those copycats now use a shell that looks just like ours. How can we get back at them? Ah right, let’s make headlines with an all new font for our next release!

    • https://me.yahoo.com/a/VGcrtvIXi_RnfkkUohq8qxB516OFDkGOBQ--#9f2fc Shock

      hehe, pretty much how I felt!
      I don’t see much to like in the new GNOME font. I think Aurulent Sans is amazing, I’ve been using that for some months and now the Ubuntu font is starting to grow on me. Maybe I’ll start to like the new GNOME font too.

      • trapDoor

        Never heard of Aurulent Sans before. Thanks for mentioning it. Looks really amazing!

        • http://twitter.com/alejandronova Ernesto Manríquez

          Simply don’t get it. It looks to me like a cheap (very cheap, indeed) copy of Luxi Sans, a font that has been with us since the dawn of the Linux desktop.

  • http://twitter.com/cyrildz cyrildz

    why gnome just didn’t use the ubuntu font ? ubuntu font is far better (my thoughts) they want ubuntu to use their shell but they can’t use the ubuntu font as default…

    • Anonymous

      Gnome doesn’t want to favor any one distribution, I’m sure. It can be argued that font is a type of branding, and they’ve always been adamant about keeping any sort of branding at all out of vanilla Gnome, whether it’s Ubuntu or Gentoo or Red Hat. That being said, I do like Ubuntu’s font for desktop use.

  • Anonymous

    lol awesome. GNOME_SHELL VS UNITY FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://www.flickr.com/stuffbox DuduMaroja

    Looks bad on my display..

  • Anonymous

    It’s a nice font. I like the Ubuntu font better, but hey, Linux is about choice. Besides, it’s just a font. Use it, or don’t use it. It’s up to you.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QTYU3WNSQH42SVAFYHGGDWUUNA Linux Thegreat

    Cantarell was around long before Ubuntu font. Some people need to get their facts straight.

  • http://technos.wordpress.com/ Daniele80

    Is there a ppa for this font?

  • http://www.stphenjudge.ie Stephen Judge

    Can someone explain, when you download these font file, where do you place them or how do you install them to use them. I am only used installing from a .deb or PPA.

    • Anonymous

      Just open the file and click ‘Install’

      • http://www.stphenjudge.ie Stephen Judge

        Thanks for the solution, I didn’t think it would be that easy.

    • http://www.lucaluffi.it matala

      Put fonts files in this folder:
      - home/.fonts – only for your user
      or
      - /usr/share/fonts/truetype – for all users

    • Anonymous

      You can place fonts directly into your users
      ~/.fonts

    • http://www.stphenjudge.ie Stephen Judge

      Thanks for all your replies, turned out it was easier than I thought it would be, man I love Ubuntu.

  • https://launchpad.net/~boniboyblue Boni Boy Blue

    That looks positively ghastly on my screen. I’ll stick to Ubuntu font point 8

  • http://twitter.com/Lineplus Lineplus

    Compared with sans-serif, very ugly on small text (10px) with the “better contrast” smoothing mode.

  • http://twitter.com/Hexual Ian ‘IZO’ Cylkowski

    I think this is a good move, quality typography has long been ignored in the OSS desktop world. Cantarell is an excellent choice and I enjoy the author’s work. It still needs some work, mind, but I’m happy to see that GNOME are endorsing it now.

    • http://twitter.com/Hexual Ian ‘IZO’ Cylkowski

      In fact, just the font from the download provided here, it has improved since the last time I used it but there’s still room for improvement. At sizes below 13pts I think the kerning needs to be a little tighter, the stroke needs to be a little thicker and more even and the x-height for bold suffers and looks too squished. Definitely better, though.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ZCKHVTP4QZOFR3PR2AB6FE7VJ4 Dexter

    Gnome is going to need all the changes they can get if they want to compete against Ubuntu now.

  • Mohan

    Looks nice, but seems very much similar to Ubuntu font family.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/R25APX2NWD4262MDEYS2BWWEZU Mikolaj

    It would be very exciting if one could not get hundreds of fonts on the internet… but as it is I do not see the excitement.

  • http://twitter.com/grejppi Greippi

    My default font is Aurulent Sans, but Cantarell has been my window title font for a long time now and I’m pretty much happy with it.

    What I don’t like, though, is how Cantarell’s plain tilde is not on the same level as text.

  • http://twitter.com/michielbeijen Michiel Beijen

    I think it matches rather well with standard Gnome. Lots of whitespace everywhere. Why are the different letters so far apart?

  • http://twitter.com/alejandronova Ernesto Manríquez

    Lato (from the Google Font Directory) is my choice by now, but I’m still waiting for KDE to have a really good default font.

 
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