This article has been checked and updated in January 2020 for correctness.
Because they spend most of their days looking at them, most sysadmins and developers are pretty choosy when it comes to picking a monospaced font for use in terminal emulators or text editors. Here are six great monospace fonts that can be easily installed from the official Fedora repositories to make your text editor or terminal emulator look and function just that little bit nicer.
Inconsolata
A favourite of many programmers, Inconsolata is a clear and highly readable humanist monospaced font designed by Raph Levien. It features a slashed zero to distinguish that glyph from the uppercase O, and also has easily distinguishable different glyphs for the lowercase L and the numeral 1.
To install Inconsolata, search for it in the Software application in Fedora Workstation, or install the levien-inconsolata-fonts package using DNF or yum on the command line.
$ sudo dnf install levien-inconsolata-fonts
Source Code Pro
Source Code Pro is a monospaced typeface released under the SIL Open Font License by Adobe. It features a dotted zero to distinguish that glyph from the uppercase O, and also has different glyphs for the lowercase L and the numeral 1.
To install Source Code Pro, search for it in the Software application in Fedora Workstation, or install the adobe-source-code-pro-fonts package using DNF or yum on the command line.
$ sudo dnf install adobe-source-code-pro-fonts
Fira Mono
Fira Mono is the monospaced variant of the Firefox brand font Fira Sans. It has a little more weight than some of the other fonts in our list. It also features a dotted zero, and different glyphs for the lowercase L and the numeral 1.
To install Fira Mono, search for it in the Software application in Fedora Workstation, or install the mozilla-fira-mono-fonts package using DNF or yum on the command line.
$ sudo dnf install mozilla-fira-mono-fonts
Droid Sans Mono
Droid Sans Mono is part of the Droid Family of fonts commisioned by Google for earlier versions of Android. One downside to this font is the lack of a dotted or slashed zero, making the zero glyph hard to distinguish from the uppercase O. There is also versions of Droid Sans Mono available on a 3rd party website that add a dotted or slashed zero to this font, but these arent available in the Fedora repos, so you will need to download and install the font manually.
To install Droid Sans Mono, search for it in the Software application in Fedora Workstation, or install the google-droid-sans-mono-fonts package using DNF or yum on the command line.
$ sudo dnf install google-droid-sans-mono-fonts
DejaVu Sans Mono
To install DejaVu Sans Mono, search for it in the Software application in Fedora Workstation, or install the dejavu-sans-mono-fonts package using DNF or yum on the command line.
$ sudo dnf install dejavu-sans-mono-fonts
Hack
Hack bills itself as having “No frills. No gimmicks. Hack is hand groomed and optically balanced to be a workhorse face for code.” Hack builds on the monospaced versions in the Bitstream Vera and DejaVu font families, modifying and enhancing glyph coverage, shapes and spacing. Hack works best in the 8px to 12px range on regular DPI monitors, and as low as 6px on higher DPI monitors.
Hack is not in the official Fedora repos yet, but is being worked on. You can install the font files directly from the Hack github.
Krystian
Inconsolata – thanks 🙂
Malikith
Indeed, Inconsolata is a very nice font. It’s easy on the eyes and easy to read. Thank you for posting this.
Álvaro Peña
Liberation Mono!
yiwan
Yeah!
Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér
Keeping an eye on this – because I can use a clean font for working in Focuswriter.
Ryan Lerch
ooh, thanks for the tip! i should do another post about focus writer — it’s a pretty neat piece of software. 🙂
Adam Trickett
If the zero isn’t marked I don’t use the – which rules out Droid Sans Mono for programming and the console. I’ve got dyslexia and I need all the hints I can get.
I’ve used the others you list and at the moment Source Code Pro is my favourite.
I’ve also used Anonymous and Anonymous Pro – both are open and both have marked zeros.
Ryan Lerch
This website has some versions of Droid Mono with either a dotted or slashed zero — ill update the post to include links to them:
http://www.cosmix.org/software/
Cristian Ciupitu
Isn’t DejaVu Sans Mono the default monospaced font on Fedora, already?
DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"
Maxim Egorushkin
Source Code Pro would be the best if it did not have too much leading, i.e. the lines are too sparse.
Liberation Mono is very similar to DejaVu Sans Mono, but with less leading. Hence Liberation Mono is one the best, in my opinion.
Syskoll
The Fira designers are very nice and incredibly responsive. I had found a minor issue with a glyph in their font and emailed them, they responded very quickly and scheduled a fix. Fira Mono is growing on me. It’s readable yet compact.
Ryan Lerch
Yeah, i knew about Fira Sans, but didn’t know about the Monospaced member of the family until I started researching this article. It is now what i use for gedit and Terminal. It also looks fantastic on my HiDPI laptop. 🙂
Sumit Bhardwaj
Thanks for posting this, very useful. I downloaded and installed Inconsolata, and its really good. 🙂
Rabin
Currently I use Source Code Pro, But there is also Anka/Code which looks good.
condor
I picked Droid Sans Mono for a test drive.
Adam Brown
Droid Sans Mono and Monaco is my favorite 😀
Shishir
I think code new roman available in open font library is also excellent.
Fellipe
Inconsolata not work wit PyCharm… 🙁 anyone know why?
pulpn
don’t forget terminus-font
Lukáš Kotek
Exactly my words, Terminus is great 🙂
Gmaster
Ubuntu Mono for me. Most beautiful monospace font out there IMO
Ding-Yi Chen
Not quite sure why Deja Vu Mono is missing. The benefits of that are:
1. Exists long time ago, that is, you can use it in RHEL6.
2. Easy to tell the difference between 1Il|
Terminology (Enlightenment’s terminal) has interesting font demo by using following string:
oislOIS.015!|,
Deja Vu is one of the font that easily tell them apart.
aeweizoS
Please add PT Mono
Cat
This one looks good for me: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
Some folks with dyslexia told this fonts helps a lot.
renegadevi
Menlo
It may not be free, but it sure looks great.
adsf
Liberation Mono needs more mentions. It’s awesome.
Pravin Satpute
Indeed we have good and active userbase for Liberation Mono..dunno why it miss the list of great Mono fonts.
Matthew Bunt
Installing Inconsolata is always one of the first things I do on any new installation.
Brian Terry
I’ve found the Roboto series from the later Android releases to be a good set of fonts overall but particularly the monospaced variety. They can be found here:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto+Mono
Anonymous Coward
You should add Noto Mono (package google-noto-mono-fonts). The Noto fonts are the successors to the Droid fonts.
Robert Hurst
For me, Lucida Console followed by Droid Sans Mono.
But for the console on HD / UltraHD displays, terminus. Fetch and make the font:
http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/
cd terminus-font-4.40
./configure
make psf
make install-psf
cp /usr/local/share/consolefonts/ter-v32n.psf.gz /lib/kbd/consolefonts/
vi /etc/vconsole.conf
FONT=”ter-v32n”
setfont ter-v32n
Bob
I’ll test all them today! so far I’ve always used Terminus in terminal.
Marti van Lin
I prefer Virtual Consoles for the majority of tasks.
Here’s the content of my /etc/vconsole.conf file:
KEYMAP=”us-intl”
FONT=”ter-132n”
That’s a good looking large font on a 1920×1086 32″ TV (as a monitor).
Ulisses
Fedora Magazine is one of the best things about fedora.
Awesome work fellas!
Ulisses
Also, Courier Prime.
Check this font, it’s awesome!
Shattarack
These are all fine choices. My personal favorite is CamingoCode by Jan Fromm. Among other virtues, the glyphs are exceptionally legible in smaller fonts, with slashed zeros and 1 / l differentiation. It comes in four linked styles. You can find it at no charge on his web site, MyFonts, and other sites.
Curtis Gagliardi
Fira is beautiful, first font I’ve liked anywhere near as much as fantasque-sans: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
Timothée
What about Iosevka — https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ ? It’s great, and very compact.