Terminals font hinting

Alias, Hinting, Hintstyle, Subpixel

"none" Is no antialiasing and no hinting. Only bitmap fonts (like Terminus) are likely to look okay like this

"slight" Is no antialiasing but with "slight" hinting (though usually or always the style doesn't matter). Well hinted vector fonts like Pragamata Pro and Dejavu Sans Mono work well with this, and produce very crisp results (as if they were a bitmap font)

"full aa" Is antialiased with "full" style hinting. This uses greyscale for partially filled pixels, and attempts to align the font to the pixel grid (at the expense of font shape). This tends to stick vertical and horizontal bits centered to a pixel, but curvy bits can't be helped. The result is crisper straight runs and fuzzy curves. Niceness of this is largely opinion.

"slight aa" Is antialiased with "slight" style hinting. This uses greyscale for partially filled pixels, and attempts to maintain the font shape at the expense of pixel grid alignment. This tends to result in wider, fuzzier, softer looking rendering, but usually is more consistent looking (to me, anyway). Niceness of this is largely opinion.

Color sets: Grey on Black, Black on White, Solarized Dark, Solarized Light, Bespin Dark, Bespin Light

8 pt (@96dpi)

none slight full aa slight aa
PragmataPro
Dejavu
Inconsolata
Anonymous
Envy
Source
Terminus
Ubuntu
TexGyCo
Liberation
Droid

10 pt (@96dpi)

none slight full aa slight aa
PragmataPro
Dejavu
Inconsolata
Anonymous
Envy
Source
Terminus
Ubuntu
TexGyCo
Liberation
Droid

12 pt (@96dpi)

none slight full aa slight aa
PragmataPro
Dejavu
Inconsolata
Anonymous
Envy
Source
Terminus
Ubuntu
TexGyCo
Liberation
Droid

20 pt (@96dpi)

none slight full aa slight aa
PragmataPro
Dejavu
Inconsolata
Anonymous
Envy
Source
Terminus
Ubuntu
TexGyCo
Liberation
Droid