Consolas vs Ubuntu Mono
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 9:52AM In September 2011 I encountered Ubuntu Mono. Having used it for all my coding since, I find it’s a worthy coding font. I find it one the closest practical replacements to Consolas. Today, I’ll take you on a visual tour of Ubuntu Mono.
Basic Characters
(click for a larger image)
(click for a larger image)
Key Differences
Overall Consolas and Ubuntu Mono are very similar. There are few interesting differences worth looking at in greater detail.
Consolas is on the left. Ubuntu Mono is on the right.
I find the Ubuntu Mono uppercase M a bit odd due to its curvature.
The W shares a similar style to the uppercase M.
The lowercase "i" and "j" have a cute little curve on them. Although I feared it would be distracting, in practice I never noticed them.
The lowercase "r" is a sharp departure from what I would have expected.
I generally like my angle brackets taller in the manner of Consolas.
It's the zero that I least adore. I do appreciate that it looks different than the capital letter O, but I prefer a slashed zero of Consolas.
Get the Comparison Chart
I created a PDF file and VSD file showing the comparison between the two. It’s available below:
Reader Comments (1)
Nice comparison. These are my favorite two fonts for coding. For coding with very small font sizes (e.g. 8), I strongly prefer Consolas. Ubuntu Mono becomes increasingly attractive as you increase the font size. At 14, Ubuntu Mono is much better. Just the experience of one coder :)