Avenir alternatives

Two of my all-time favourite sans serif typefaces are Frutiger and Avenir, both of which were created by Adrian Frutiger.

I’ve already written an extensive post about my recommended Frutiger alternatives, but here’s a quick run-down of my favourite Avenir alternatives.

Why an alternative?

Two reasons.

Avenir is expensive!

A single-user, desktop-only licence to Avenir Next costs AU$1,520.

So if you don’t already have access to Avenir through some other means, then you’ll want a free or more affordable alternative.

Of course if you’re a macOS user, then this reason won’t apply to you since you already have all of Avenir and Avenir Next pre-installed in your operating system.

Regular weight may be too light for text

If you only have access to Avenir through a Microsoft 365 subscription, though, this second reason might apply to you.

That’s because the Avenir fonts included with the Microsoft Office suite are:

  • Avenir Next Light + Italic

  • Avenir Next Regular + Italic

  • Avenir Next Demi Bold + Italic

  • Avenir Next Bold + Italic

The problem with this is that the Regular weight of Avenir is quite light, so if you’re using it as a text font – especially at smaller sizes – it’s not the easiest to read on screens.

Compare the text below set in Avenir Next Regular (on the left) and Helvetica Neue Regular (on the right). The text on the left does look a little more elegant, yes – since lighter typefaces tend to look more elegant anyway – but the text on the right is easier to read.

macOS users don’t have this problem because they can just use the Medium weight of Avenir Next instead – like in the graphic below where both columns are easily readable.

Paid alternatives

My favourite paid alternatives to Avenir are Hint from Paratype and Sailec from Type Dynamic.

Noah from Fontfabric is also good but, like Avenir, its Regular weight is a little light.

None of these are copies of the Avenir, of course, so you won’t get all its design quirks – like the horizontal tail of the uppercase ‘Q’ – but they all have a vibe that’s similar to Avenir’s.

Hint

Hint doesn’t have the 1920s luxury feel of Avenir (with its tall and narrow letterforms) but it does have a more “quiet luxury” feel about it.

Sailec

Sailec is billed as a “totally neutral” typeface, but it has much more style than Helvetica, for example, and is a good, albeit somewhat muted, alternative to Avenir.

Free alternatives

My favourite free alternatives to Avenir are Figtree from Eric Kennedy and Montserrat from Julieta Ulanovsky and others.

A more neutral, but still somewhat elegant, alternative is Poppins from Indian Type Foundry.

Of these, Montserrat has the most interesting uppercase ‘Q’ but I think Figtree is a better overall alternative for use on screens.

Figtree

According to its designer, Figtree’s vibe walks the line between “simplicity and friendliness” so it doesn’t quite have the elegant vibe you get from Avenir. But because many of its its letterforms are so similar to Avenir’s, it does work as a decent alternative.

It’s probably more accurate to say that Figtree is a good alternative to Frutiger, by the way – and perhaps a version of Frutiger that leans more towards the elegance of Avenir.

Montserrat

Montserrat has a stylish/elegant vibe, but its letterforms are both larger and wider than Avenir’s – which makes sense, given Montserrat’s inspiration came from old posters and signs in the Montserrat neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. Still, it’s a pretty decent alternative to Avenir.

Final thoughts

I love Avenir and use it whenever I can (eg in presentations and in printed letters), but if I want an elegant typeface for body text font use on screens, then Hint is what I end up using most of the time.

Arial and Helvetica alternatives

I created a video [YouTube, 14:35min] about the typefaces I recommend when people tell me they’re bored of (usually) Arial and they want me to suggest a more interesting font that still looks professional.

However, I hate it when content is video-locked (ie available only in video format) so here are the key bits from that video in text form.

Why use something different?

There are two reasons you could be looking for an alternative to Arial and Helvetica:

  1. Same-same: You want a typeface that’s very similar to Arial and Helvetica. Maybe because you prefer a typeface with an open licence or one with a less expensive and less restrictive licence. Or maybe you just don’t have access to Arial and Helvetica and you want to use a drop-in replacement.

  2. Different: You want something slightly different from Arial and Helvetica, though you still want this typeface to have an overall neutral-ish vibe.

I have recommendations for you either way.

Similar to Arial and Helvetica

There are a lot of typefaces that are very similar to Arial and Helvetica, but these are the ones I usually recommend.

My free favourites

These are my two free recommendations:

I actually prefer Arimo over Arial for everyday use because I think Arimo looks better on screens: it has a slightly taller x-height, more open apertures, and a little more character overall. Check out the The Register website to see how good Arimo can look on a text-heavy website.

I also prefer Nimbus Sans over Helvetica because a commercial licence to Helvetica (ie not just the personal licence you get with macOS) is quite expensive.

Before you ask, I’m not a huge fan of Liberation Sans (from Red Hat) so that’s not a typeface I’d recommend.

My paid favourites

These are my four paid recommendations [1]:

Slightly different from Arial and Helvetica

For those of you who skipped my video on this topic [YouTube, 14:35min] these are the not-so-neutral, sans serif typefaces I recommend:

My free favourites

These are my four free recommendations:

Officer Sans was designed to be metrically compatible with Arial and Helvetica and I use this my default spreadsheet font.

When I need to write text in a neutral-ish, sans serif typeface, though – like a formal letter – its usually a toss-up between Public Sans and Officer Sans. [2]

My paid favourites

These are my four paid recommendations [1]:

If you want to know why I recommend these typefaces out of all the other ones that out there, you should watch my video.

Honourable mentions

I also have two honourable mentions:

Roboto is used everywhere on the web but I don’t see it being used very often in documents and presentations, so this might be an interesting alternative to consider.

I love Unica as a typeface, but I much prefer Lineto’s Unica77 over Linotype’s Neue Haas Unica (which, as it happens, I do have a licence to). Unfortunately, Unica77 is very expensive. That’s why I only have it under a trial licence and why it’s an honourable mention and not a full-on recommendation. <sigh>

Any others?

Do you have a go-to neutral sans serif typeface that you’d recommend to others? Let me know.

FYI, the text used in the comparison-graphics above is from the opening sentences of The Rook by Daniel O’Malley.

[1] Whenever possible, I recommend typefaces from only indepenedent, interesting, or otherwise notable type foundries.

[2] As its designer, Dan Williams, mentioned in an interview, Public Sans pairs really well with Georgia (or with Gelasio, which is the Google Fonts alternative to Georgia).

[Photo walk] Around the northern suburbs of Melbourne, part 9

Nadia and I have been enjoying our time off during the year-end break, going on walks around various parts of the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Nadia at a community football pitch

Close-up photo of the back and side of a woman’s head and shoulders. The woman is wearing a black hoodie and a cyan 2020 ICC Cricket World Cup cap. Out of focus, in the background of the photo, is a neighbourhood football pitch.

Nadia looking out over a community football pitch

Photo of the back and side of a woman’s head and shoulders. The woman is wearing a black hoodie and a cyan 2020 ICC Cricket World Cup cap. Out of focus, in the background of the photo, is a neighbourhood football pitch.

Plane spotter waiting patiently in the Essendon Fields Airport flight path

Photo of the valley of a suburban river with a rail bridge crossing over it. A plane spotter is leaning against a wire fence that runs down the decline of the valley. A camera mounted on a tripod in set up in front of him.

Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge

Photo of a railway viaduct built across a creek’s valley and flood plain. The viaduct comprises steel girders supported by steel-framed towers. Behind the viaduct is the residential suburb of Gowanbrae.

Top of a Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge tower

Photo of the top of a steel-frame tower that is supporting a rain bridge, also built out of steel girders.

Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge on a bright day

Photo of a railway viaduct built across a creek’s valley and flood plain. The viaduct comprises steel girders supported by steel-framed towers. Behind the viaduct is the residential suburb of Gowanbrae.

Looking up at the Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge

Photo of a railway viaduct built across a creek’s valley and flood plain. The viaduct comprises steel girders supported by steel-framed towers.

Looking up along a tower of the Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge

Photo looking up along the length of a steel-frame tower that is supporting a rain bridge, also built out of steel girders.

Police helicopter over Strathmore Heights

Photo looking up at a blue-and-white Victoria Police helicopter hovering in the air above a residential suburb. Several tree branches and leaves can be seen in the foreground of the photo.

Walking her dog along Moonee Ponds Creek Trail

Photo of a woman walking a black dog along a trail that runs alongside a suburban river.

The Glenroy side of the Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge

Photo looking up, along an incline, at a railway viaduct built across a creek’s valley and flood plain. The viaduct comprises steel girders supported by steel-framed towers.

Riding a toy sled down a walking path

Photo of a young boy riding a wheeled children’s sled down a cemented walking/cycling path that descends into a suburban valley.

About to fall off a toy sled because he was going too fast

Photo of a young boy riding a wheeled children’s sled down a cemented walking/cycling path that descends into a suburban valley. The boy is leaning hard to one side so that he can follow the sharp curve of the path.

Walking path up Kingsford Smith Ulm Reserve

Photo of a walking/cycling path that goes up a suburban valley. The path is surrounded by trees on both sides. In the background of the photo a railway bridge can be seen crossing the valley.

Walking path at Kingsford Smith Ulm Reserve

Photo of a walking/cycling path that goes up a suburban valley. The path is surrounded by grass and trees. By the side of the path is a hairpin-turn sign for cyclists. In the background of the photo a railway bridge can be seen crossing the valley.

Moonee Ponds Creek Viaduct Rail Bridge from Kingsford Smith Ulm Reserve

Photo of a railway viaduct built across a creek’s valley and flood plain, which is the Kingsford Smith Ulm Reserve. The viaduct comprises steel girders supported by steel-framed towers. Behind the viaduct is the residential suburb of Gowanbrae.

Nadia keeping an eye on her surroundings as she takes a photo

Photo of the back of a woman holding up her smartphone to take a photo. The woman is looking to her left to make sure she isn’t in the path of a cyclist. Her long, black hair is in a ponytail and she is wearing a brown sweatshirt and a cyan 2020 ICC Cricket World Cup cap. In front of her are the trees and bushes growing along the side of a suburban valley.

Straight stretch of walking path at Kingsford Smith Ulm Reserve

Low-angle photo of a walking/cycling path that goes up a suburban valley. At the end of this long stretch of path is a hairpin-turn sign for cyclists.

Turtles in a large pond

Photo of several brown turtles swimming along the banks of a large pond.

Turtle poking its head out of a pond

Photo of a brown turtle swimming in a pond, with its head poking out of the water.

Two turtles in a pond

Photo of two brown turtles swimming in a pond, one with its head poking out of the water and the other swimming completely underwater.

My favourite typefaces (December 2025)

[NOTE: The most up-to-date version of this list is always on the ‘Typography’ page.]

The end of the year is a good time for me to update my list of favourite typefaces.

Since my last update in December 2024, I have:

As a reminder, the typefaces below are grouped by their level of formality (‘How I think about typefaces’) and are sorted in decreasing order of versatility (ie how easy they are to use in different types of projects).

Serif typefaces

Sans serif typefaces

Slab serif typefaces

Monospace typefaces

Typeface wish list (realistic)

What are your favourite or go-to typefaces? I’d love to know.

[Photo walk] Walking around the city and suburbs, part 2

Here are some photos I took in the southern, eastern, and northern suburbs of Melbourne over the last couple of weeks.

Someone had a good night last night in St Kilda, Melbourne

Photo of an almost completely empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey lying on a stone wall around a public park in a suburb of Melbourne.

Arrow “head” mailbox and newspaper slot

Photo of a triangular, bare metal mailbox outside a house. The mailbox looks like a creature’s head, complete with holes for eyes and the mail slot as its mouth.

Grumpy arrow “head” mailbox and newspaper slot

Photo of a triangular, bare metal mailbox outside a house. The mailbox looks like a creature’s head, complete with holes for eyes and the mail slot as its mouth.

Train waiting at the elevated Murrumbeena railway station

Photo looking up, through the leaf-filled branches of a tree, to an elevated train track and train station platform. A blue, silver, and yellow coloured train has stopped at this platform.

Underneath the elevated Murrumbeena railway station

Photo looking down the length of a pair of elevated train tracks being held up by massive concrete pillars. This area under the tracks is a parking lot, which is almost full of parked cars.

Facilities for humans and their dogs at Murrumbeena railway station

Photo of a stone bench around next to some bushes underneath an elevated train station. Next to the bench is a metal drinking-water fountain. On the floor, next to the fountain, is a bright blue water bowl for dogs.

Part of the Frogtopia mural by Anthony Breslin next to Murrumbeena railway station

Photo of a vibrantly coloured mural showing fantastical characters that resemble frogs, flies, and other insects. These characters are taken from Anthony Breslin’s children's book Brezania.

Part of the Frogtopia mural by Anthony Breslin next to Murrumbeena railway station

Photo of a vibrantly coloured mural showing fantastical characters that resemble frogs, flies, and other insects. These characters are taken from Anthony Breslin’s children's book Brezania.

Traffic light on Murrumbeena Road, directly underneath Murrumbeena railway station

Photo looking straight up along the pole of a traffic light that’s located underneath an elevated railway station.

Bench outside Murrumbeena railway station

Photo taken from the seat level of an outdoor bench at the intersection of two suburban streets.

Bank of Australia Post post office boxes

Black-and-white photo of over a dozen post office boxes, each with an embossed Australia Post logo, a keyhole, and a PO box number.

Had a collision, but didn't need to call the cops?

Photo of a sticker on the back of a sign that's on a bicycle path. This bicycle path is about to cross a suburban road. The sticker contains and QR code and text that reads, “Had a collision, but didn’t need to call the cops? Report it to Merri-bek Council! It takes 1 minute and helps identify hot spots. Scan me.”

Share the love of gardening

Photo of a two large plastic bottles filled with a dark liquid and a few small plants in plastic pots placed on top of a residential wall. A hand painted sign on what looks like a wooden chopping board reads, “Share the love of Gardening. Please take”, followed by a smiley face.

[Video] Bored of Arial and Helvetica? Try these fonts instead

Are you, like me, are bored of using the default, neutral, sans serif typefaces that came preinstalled with your word processor?

I made a video about the four free and four paid alternative typefaces I recommend you use instead.

FYI, I use Public Sans all the time and Officer Sans is my default spreadsheet font.

Not quite on a roll

This is now my third typography explainer video. The long gap between the first two videos and this one is because first I got struck down by post-viral fatigue and then life and work both got super busy. Oh well.

Video transcript

Links and references, in order of appearance

Font downloads and purchases

Icons and photos

Funny and sad comments on my content

Two recent comments on my online content made me laugh out loud and then feel a little sad about the state of the world. After that I shrugged and moved on my with my life, though I did want to document these comments here so I could have a little chuckle about them in the future as well.

Undo the woke-ness!

A little over a year ago I published a video on YouTube in which I urged people to stop using the Times New Roman typeface and, instead, use a serif typeface that was designed to work well on modern, high-resolution screens.

Screenshot of a YouTube video titled, ‘Stop using Times New Roman’.

This video performed well, receiving over 4,000 views on YouTube, and it got lots of good comments too.

But a couple of days ago a user named @DoodiePunk posted this comment under that video:

Replacing Times New Roman with Calibri was the biggest fail and I’m glad the U.S. government reverted its decision.

Screenshot of a comment under a YouTube video from a user named DoodiePunk that reads, “Replacing Times New Roman with Calibri was the biggest fail and I’m glad the U.S. government reverted its decision.”

This confused me because, at no point in my video had I talked about Calibri as an alternative to Times New Roman and I certainly hadn’t mentioned the United States Government.

It was only later, when I caught up on the day’s news, that I understood what this comment was referencing:

Screenshot from the ABC News Australia website with the headline, “Marco Rubio orders US State Department to revert to Times New Roman font, calling Calibri adoption ‘wasteful’”.

The ABC summarised this news article as follows:

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says his predecessor’s switch to Calibri for official documents had been “another wasteful DEIA program” and the font was too informal.

In 2023, the State Department said Calibri was a more accessible font for people with disabilities.

The Trump administration has been eradicating federal programs promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

I’m not sure how @DoodiePunk got to my video about Times New Roman. Most likely they:

  • saw some other YouTube video about this news item and then got recommended my video at the end of it,

  • saw that my video was titled ‘Stop using Times New Roman’,

  • didn’t watch my video, but assumed I was supportive of the current US administration’s anti-DEI initiatives, and

  • felt the need to share their thoughts with me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which came first?

About a month ago I published a post about an aggressive business development person from Monotype who tried to get my employer to purchase font licences we didn’t actually need to buy.

This post was featured on the front page of Hacker News and, as a result, has received over 10,000 views so far.

One of the comments on Hacker News from a user named @liquidise really cracked me up:

I’m not typically sensitive to AI-sounding text but those image captions leave me understanding others’ issues with it.

Screenshot of a comment from user liquidise that reads, “I’m not typically sensitive to AI-sounding text but those image captions leave me understanding others’ issues with it.” A reply to this comment from user hibbelig reads, “It sounded like something a screen reader would say to help visually impaired visitors. But I don’t actually have a clue what screen readers do say.”

I found this comment really funny because @liquidise has it completely the other way around: large language models learned how to write from people who describe things well!

After I stopped chuckling, I found that I was quite chuffed about what @liquidise had said. Without realising it, they’d basically said I wrote good, neutral, descriptive captions for all the images I’d included in my blog post. Yay!

Sad about the state of the world

While I was briefly saddened by the polarisation and lack of knowledge inadvertently expressed by @DoodiePunk and @liquidise, I’m happier to just focus on the humour of the situation and move on my with my life. Which is what I’ll do now.

But if you want more…

Two quick things before I go, though.

How to write good image descriptions

Here’s an excellent infographic on how to write good alt text for all your digital images. This was created by the UK digital agency Puzzle for its 2022 #AccessAlt campaign.

An infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara in a pool of water with a yellow-coloured yuzu balanced on top of its head. Parts of alt text are divided by color: identify who, expression, description, colour, and interesting features. The finished image description reads, “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu fruits are floating in the water, and one is balanced on the top of the capybara’s head.”

This infographic has made its way around Mastodon several times, but it was originally referenced and archived by Veronica Lewis on her website.

Not understanding formal writing or how large language models work

Author and photographer Marcus Olang’ wrote an excellent edition of his newsletter titled, ‘I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.’

It was reading Marcus’s piece that prompted me to write this post today.

If you are not clear about why generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT (that are trained using large language models) generate text the way they do, you should read this article.

Cool type pairings on the web, part 2

This is the second post in my cool type-pairing series in which I’ll be sharing, well, the cool typeface pairings I see on the web.

NewsBlur

The site on which I read the most amount of text is NewsBlur, the news reader/feed aggregator that I switched to when Google Reader was unceremoniously killed off in 2013.

It was here that I first came across Whitney (Hoefler&Co), which to this day remains one of my all-time favourite typefaces. That’s the typeface I use on NewsBlur to read all my news feeds.

Screenshot from the NewsBlur website of an article titled, “How China cleaned up its air pollution - and what that meant for the climate”.

Whitney was originally created in the late 1990s for the Whitney Museum in New York, USA. Designed for both wayfinding and editorial uses (ie for physical signs and for using as body text), it draws from the functionality of Frutiger (another one of my all-time favourite typefaces) and the structure of various American gothics, such as News Gothic.

Rands in Repose

Speaking of typography from Hoefler&Co, Rands in Repose uses one of my favourite typographic pairings: Ideal Sans (Hoefler&Co) for body text and Sentinel (Hoefler&Co) for headings.

Screenshot from the Rands in Repose blog of a post titled, “The Loop”.

Ideal Sans is a fun typeface with almost no straight lines and very few symmetries across its design. Sentinel is a modern take on a classical slab serif typeface. The two work brilliantly together.

The Conversation

Moving away from expensive typefaces, let’s look at The Conversation since this website uses typefaces that are available for free under the SIL Open Font License.

This website uses Libre Baskerville (Impallari Type) for body text and Montserrat (Julieta Ulanovsky, Sol Matas, Juan Pablo del Peral, Jacques Le Bailly ) for headings. For everything else (byline, metadata, navigation, footer, etc) it uses your browser’s default sans serif font.

Screenshot from The Conversation website of an article titled, “How China cleaned up its air pollution - and what that meant for the climate”.

Libre Baskerville is an open-source, screen-optimised adaptation of the original 1775 Baskerville typeface. It looks authoritative, yet approachable. Montserrat is a geometric typeface by Julieta Ulanovsky that’s based on posters, signs, and windows from the historic Montserrat neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. Both typefaces are a little large and a little wide, and they work really well together.

ABC News

Finally let’s look at the ABC News (Australia) website which uses the bespoke typefaces ABC Sans Nova for its body text and ABC Serif for its headings – both designed by Australian Type Foundry.

Screenshot from the ABC News website of an article titled, “First Hike Project helps refugees experience hiking in Australia’s bushland for the first time”.

You can download these fonts from the ABC News GitHub instance. Since all of ABC News’ other GitHub work is available under the MIT licence, I suspect these fonts have been made available under that licence as well – though that isn’t spelled out on the download page itself.

The ABC superfamily of typefaces is friendly and easy to read on screens, and helps maintain the reputation of the most trusted news source in Australia.

Any suggestions?

Let me know if you have any favourite website typeface pairings. I’d love to check them out.

[Photo walk] Jim Stynes Bridge

Back on my go-to 40mm lens, I took these photos as I walked along the Jim Stynes Bridge on the Yarra River.

It was a hot, sunny day as I walked to my car after my team’s year-end lunch at the newly-opened 1 Hotel Melbourne.

Outdoor seating still-life

Photo of some metal-and-wood outdoor furniture that almost looks like a still-life painting. The photo shows a tall, narrow, black table with two tall, dark-green chairs arranged on either side of it.

Artistically arranged outdoor seating at 1 Hotel Melbourne

Photo of some metal-and-wood outdoor furniture that almost looks like a still-life painting. The furniture has been placed in the ‘Seafarers Event Space’ outside 1 Hotel Melbourne. This space consists of an outdoor wooden deck constructed around a historic, bare-concrete building. The furniture is a tall, narrow, black table with two tall, dark-green chairs arranged on either side of it.

Ladder and mooring bollard on the Yarra River

Black-and-white photo of a wide, urban river with a bridge running across it. Immediately in front of the photographer, along the near bank of the river, is a sturdy mooring bollard, next to which is a metal ladder leading down to the river level.

Jim Stynes Bridge running underneath the Charles Grimes Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo of a curved, wood-and-metal, pedestrian and cyclist bridge that runs along the length of an urban river. The walkway and cycle path along the river have been interrupted by a road bridge that spans the river. This pedestrian and cyclist bridge connects these interrupted paths via a curved section that goes below the road bridge.

On the Jim Stynes Bridge that runs under the Charles Grimes Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo of a cityscape taken from a pedestrian and cyclist bridge that runs below a road bridge that spans an urban river.

Foul ground below

Photo of a warning sign underneath a road bridge that spans a river. The sign under the bridge reads, “Danger, foul ground below” and shows two arrows pointing down into the water.

Walking and cycling along the Jim Stynes Bridge on the Yarra River

Black-and-white photo of a cyclist and pedestrian walking on a bridge underneath another bridge that spans an urban river.

[Photo walk] Along the Yarra River #6

I finally got the chance to use make the most of my new wide-angle lens when I walked along the Yarra River after work one afternoon.

Seating area outside Collins Square, Docklands

Photo of cafe/bar seating area outside a central business district/downtown building complex. There are several tall tables arranged in an outdoor courtyard, each with several stools and a large umbrella (currently tied down).

Spiral staircase at Melbourne Quarter, Docklands

Photo looking up through a spiral staircase leading to an upstairs pavilion constructed between a group of tall office buildings.

Looking through the spiral staircase at Melbourne Quarter, Docklands

Photo looking directly up through a spiral staircase leading to an upstairs pavilion that's been constructed between several tall office buildings. The side of one such building, with a large AMP logo on it, is visible through the spiral of the staircase.

Melbourne City Helipad on the Yarra River

Photo of a large, two-aircraft helipad floating on an urban river in the middle of a metropolitan city. The helipad is anchored to one bank of the river using thick, black, metal poles. A walkway connects the helipad to the bank of the river on which the photographer is standing.

Melbourne SEA LIFE Aquarium on a bright day

Black-and-white photo looking up at a large neon sign in the shape of two stylised fish. The sign is held above the top of a building via two tall poles. A logo on this aquarium building reads, “SEA LIFE”.

The birds of Enterprize Park are unbothered by the trains

Wide photo of a blue, yellow, and silver coloured train running along set of elevated train tracks. In the bottom half of the photo you can see a few dozen birds spread out across the grass of a public park.

Sticker on a pillar underneath Queen Street Bridge

Photo of a thick concrete pillar with a red-brick and yellow-plaster facade that's holding up a bridge. A round, black-and-white sticker pasted on this pillar reads, “In 1788 Queen St Bridge was a waterfall”.

In 1788 Queen St Bridge was a waterfall

Close-up photo of a thick concrete pillar with a red-brick and yellow-plaster facade that's holding up a bridge. A round, black-and-white sticker pasted on this pillar reads, “In 1788 Queen St Bridge was a waterfall”.

Queen Street Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo taken through some trees of a vehicle, tram, and pedestrian bridge that spans an urban river.

Underneath Sandridge Bridge on the Yarra River

Wide-angle photo taken under a wide pedestrian bridge that spans an urban river.

Cool type pairings on the web, part 1

As a typography nerd, I notice and then investigate almost all the typefaces I see on the websites I visit. And its not just the typefaces themselves that I pay attention to, I also note the typeface pairings that have been used: meaning the combination of fonts used for body text and headings. I also check to see if there’s any interesting use of typography in the other text elements (pull quotes, bylines, footers, etc).

This post is the first in an ongoing series in which I’ll share the cool font pairings I find online. I’m doing this because I want to (a) share cool stuff with others who might find this interesting and (b) build a type-pairing catalogue for my own future inspiration.

Though let me begin, rather self indulgently, with my own website :)

Insanity Works

This website’s current type pairing is Chaparral (Carol Twombly; Adobe) for body text and Myriad Condensed (Carol Twombly, Robert Slimbach; Adobe) for headings. I wrote in 2023 about how happy I was when the Adobe Fonts catalogue was added to Squarespace (the platform on which this website is hosted) because these two fonts became available for use.

Before then, I used the closest Google Fonts alternatives to those typefaces: Merriweather (Eben Sorkin; Sorkin Type, Google Fonts) for body text and Oswald (Vernon Adams, Kalapi Gajjar; Cyreal) for headings.

Two graphics showing text set in (1) Chaparral and Myriad Condensed and (2) Merriweather and Oswald. The text has the title, “Chapter 1: SOUL-EATER” and is from Naomi Novik’s book, ‘A Deadly Education’.

Chaparral is a hybrid serif/slab-serif typeface. I love how beautiful and graceful it is, even while it retains the friendliness and authoritativeness of its slab serif foundation. Myriad, which is reworking of Franklin/News Gothic, is an excellent combination of elegant, friendly, and authoritative. I think the two typefaces complement each other really well.

Merriweather and Oswald also complement each other nicely, though their vibe is more modern. Merriweather is a traditional typeface (with Garamond as its inspiration) that was adapted for use on screens. It is classic and elegant, but also an everyday workhorse. Oswald is based on Alternate Gothic (a lighter, narrower version of Franklin Gothic) and this slightly-condensed reworking was also designed to be used on screens.

Going back in time

If we go further back in this history of this website – between 2007 and 2012, which was before I switched to the Squarespace – I used Georgia (Matthew Carter; Microsoft) for both body text and headings.

And if we go all the way back to when I first created this site – so from 2004 to 2007, when default, web-safe fonts ruled the day – I had everything set in Verdana (Matthew Carter, Thomas Rickner; Microsoft).

Two graphics showing text set in Georgia and Verdana, respectively. The text has the title, “Chapter 1: SOUL-EATER” and is from Naomi Novik’s book, ‘A Deadly Education’.

Georgia and Verdana were designed to be screen-first typefaces, specifically typefaces that looked good on the lower-resolution computer screens that were prevalent at the time (ie the mid-1990s). They were designed as serif/sans-serif companions to each other and both are solid, authoritative, and highly-readable typefaces.

Al Jazeera

Speaking of Georgia, a website that uses this typeface effectively is Al Jazeera.

The use of Georgia (Microsoft) for body text and Roboto (Google Fonts) for headings gives the Al Jazeera website a clean, no-nonsense, trustworthy vibe.

[Note: screenshots from websites have been heavily edited to focus on only the fonts used.]

Screenshot from the Al Jazeera website of an article titled, “Frida Kahlo painting sells for $54.7m, breaking record for female artists”.

Roboto started out a “frankenfont”, meaning an unwieldy combination Helvetica, Myriad, Frutiger, Univers, FF DIN, and Ronnia. Fortunately, its design team kept working on it and, by around 2014, it had become a much more unified and harmonised typeface. These days it is the most used font on Google Fonts and, despite its overuse, I still like using it and seeing it being used.

The Guardian

Diametrically opposed to Al Jazeera’s “let’s use default/standard typefaces” approach is The Guardian that uses a family of bespoke typefaces.

This website uses Guardian Egyptian Text for body text and Guardian Egyptian Headline for headings. It also uses Guardian Sans for various other bits of text. These are all part of a superfamily of typefaces commissioned by the Guardian for its rebrand in 2005 and designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz (with Panagiotis Haratzopoulos and Ilya Ruderman) from Commercial Type.

Screenshot from The Guardian website of an article titled, “Frida Kahlo self-portrait sells for $54.7m to set new auction record for a female artist”.

The Guardian’s highly sophisticated use of typography comes from its print newspaper origins, and I love that its designers have carried over that sophistication into its digital versions. Also, I think Guardian Egyptian is my all-time favourite newspaper typeface.

In typography, ‘Egyptian’ is the older, art-based name for what we now call slab serif typefaces. Guardian Egyptian is a warm and organic-looking slab serif that still retains its solid authoritativeness.

Wired

Let me conclude this post by talking about Wired, a magazine that I’ve been reading since it launched on the web as HotWired in 1994 – back when it used “Arial,Helvetica,Verdana” as its HTML font stack!

These days Wired uses Breve Text (Dino dos Santos; DSType, Monotype) for body text; Wired Display (Abbreviated Foundry) for headings; Apercu (Colophon Foundry) for intro and lead-in text; and Wired Mono (Formula Type) for bylines and article metadata.

Screenshot from the Wired website of an article titled, “British Churches Are Putting Their Faith in Heat Pumps”.

Like the Guardian, Wired got its start in print and this is reflected in its sophisticated use of typography, digital design/typesetting, and the use of publishing elements like lead-in text that aren’t commonly used on the web. (In a magazine, ‘lead-in’ refers to the words set in all-capital letters at the start of an article’s main text.)

Both Breve Text and Wired Display are modern typefaces with a lot of personality, which suits a publication like Wired that reports on the cutting edge of technology. Apercu, meanwhile, is an amalgamation of ITC Johnston, Gill Sans, Neuzeit, and Franklin Gothic, which makes it a little quirky and gives it a lot of character. This contrasting of very modern typefaces with a quirky-classic one makes for a hugely compelling website design.

More to come

I have many more websites to talk about in this series, but I think that’ll do it for now.

If you have a website type pairing that you particularly like, please tell me about it. I’d love to take a look and then add it to my catalogue. Thanks!

West Gate Tunnel Discovery Day

Last weekend Nadia and I were among the fifty thousand people who ran, walk, or wheeled their way around the newly-built West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne during its Discovery Day.

Here are my photos from that event. Well, except for that random Southern Cross station one at the start :)

Quiet afternoon at Southern Cross Railway Station in Melbourne

Photo looking down from the first-floor concourse of a major urban railway station. The station has a massive, wave-shaped roof and you can see all the way to the elevated concourse on the other end of the many platforms.

Entry portal of the newly-built West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne

Photo of a massive, curved structure above the entrance to a road tunnel. The design of this entry portal is inspired by the nets used to catch eels – historically an important Aboriginal food source. Hundreds of visitors are walking in and out of this entryway during what a banner says is West Gate Tunnel Discovery Day.

Eel-net inspired design of the West Gate Tunnel entry portal - 1

Black-and-white photo of the eel-net inspired design of a road tunnel entryway portal. Thick curved beams create successively shallower arches across the entrance. Thinner beams crisscross these large beams at an angle, creating the effect of a traditional eel net.

Eel-net inspired design of the West Gate Tunnel entry portal - 2

Black-and-white photo of the eel-net inspired design of a road tunnel entryway portal. Thick curved beams create successively shallower arches across the entrance. Thinner beams crisscross these large beams at an angle, creating the effect of a traditional eel net.

Eel-net inspired design of the West Gate Tunnel entry portal - 3

Photo of the eel-net inspired design of a road tunnel entryway portal. Thick curved beams create successively shallower arches across the entrance. Thinner beams crisscross these large beams at an angle, creating the effect of a traditional eel net. All the beams are made of metal but are painted a streaky brown colour to resemble natural materials like wood and twine.

Nadia pointing out the transition from deluge zone 2 to 3

Photo of the inside of large road tunnel. White panel segments along the wall have text painted on them tells us that we’re moving from deluge zone two to deluge zone three. A woman in jeans and t-shirt with a comically excited expression on her face is pointing to the transition point between the two zones.

Thousands of people walking through the newly-built West Gate Tunnel

Extremely wide-cropped, wide-angle photo of thousand of visitors walking into a massive road tunnel while, on the left, an equally large number of people are walking out.

Nadia inside the West Gate Tunnel on Discovery Day

Photo of a woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt posing near the wall of a massive road tunnel. She is surrounded by hundreds of other visitors and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel in the far background of the photo. The woman is wearing jeans and t-shirt, with pink coloured text printed on the t-shirt that reads, “Less stress, more boogie”.

People checking out the newly-built West Gate Tunnel on Discovery Day - 1

Wide-cropped, wide-angle photo of thousand of visitors walking out a massive road tunnel while, on the left, an equally large number of people are walking in.

People checking out the newly-built West Gate Tunnel on Discovery Day - 2

Extremely wide-cropped, wide-angle, black-and-white photo of thousand of visitors walking out a massive road tunnel while, on the left, an equally large number of people are walking in.

Monotype font licencing shake-down

tl;dr Don’t try to shake-down a typography nerd with your dubious, automated claims about his employer using unlicensed fonts.

How it started

It started with a LinkedIn InMail message (sanitised to protect privacy):

Subject: [Urgent] Font Software Licensing Review

Hi Ameel

I hope you’re doing well.

I’m [NAME] from Monotype and have been trying to reach you at [WORK EMAIL ADDRESS], but I’m unsure if my emails have been received.

Our team has identified Monotype font software embedded in the websites/apps of [YOUR COMPANY], but we couldn’t locate the corresponding licenses in our database.

Would you be able to share the correct email address so I can provide more details and documentation? Alternatively, you’re welcome to reach out to me directly at [SENDER’S EMAIL ADDRESS]

I appreciate your time and look forward to resolving this with you at your earliest convenience.

Best regards,

[NAME]

Business Development Representative | Monotype, Australia

I was puzzled by this for two reasons:

  1. This person had my correct work email address, but at no point had they sent me an email about this issue or about anything else. I checked. (Starting with a lie? Not a good look.)

  2. As far as I knew, my employer didn’t use any Monotype fonts on its websites and apps.

Always good to check

Just in case there was any merit to this claim, I did a quick review and found that I was right. In Australia we have one corporate website, one retail website, and one retail app (with iOS and Android versions) and all of those use our official font which, for better or for worse, is Open Sans.

Now, not only is Open Sans not a Monotype typeface, it is available under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) meaning we can use this typeface for literally anything except selling the font itself. So that couldn’t be what this person was talking about.

Screenshot of the SIL Open Font Licence home page. Text below the heading reads, “The widely used, community-approved, free, libre, and open source license specifically designed for fonts and related software: a solid legal framework for worldwide development, sharing, and improvement of fonts and related software in a collaborative manner.”

Next I checked our international retail websites and our project and partnership websites, since all of those have their own branding.

I found that on the websites we directly manage, we use these typefaces:

  • Roboto, available under the SIL OFL

  • Asap, available under the SIL OFL

So no issue there.

And on the websites our partners manage, we use these typefaces:

  • Public Sans, available under the SIL OFL,

  • Network Sans, a custom font created for the government agency that built the website this is used on so they wouldn’t need a licence, and

  • Proxima Nova, the only font that does require a licence, except that Monotype doesn’t sell a licence to it.

So no issue there either.

Promotional graphics displaying the Roboto, Asap, Public Sans, Network Sans, and Proxima Nova typefaces.

With those initial checks done, I reached out to our digital team (who build and manage our websites and apps) with a screenshot of the LinkedIn message I’d received and a summary of my investigation. I asked them how they wanted me to reply.

I needed to check with these folks first because my team and I only look after the corporate website. My employer’s overall digital presence – including the back-end of the corporate website – is managed by the digital team.

Turns out a couple of people from the digital and design teams had received identical messages from this Monotype “Business Development Representative”.

A few internal back-and-forth emails later we decided that:

  • Instead of all of us responding, only one nominated person from the digital team would respond.

  • But before responding, the digital team would do their own investigation into the fonts we use and the licences we own so we could verify everything was in compliance.

Of course that’s not how things actually went down.

Three-panel meme showing Oprah Winfrey pointing at members of her TV talk show audience apparently shouting, at least according to the text captions at the bottom of each panel, “You get a LinkedIn message!”

Fishing (phishing?) around

What the Monotype rep did next is kind of what a malicious hacker does when they’re trying to get someone from your company to click on a link that’ll install malware on your computer. Over the next couple of weeks, the rep messaged a dozen or so more people from different parts of the business, hoping to hook just one person who would reply to the scary message they were sending.

Now I’d already emailed my design, brand, and digital team colleagues to tell them about this mass-messaging campaign and our plan of action for it, but the Monotype rep expanded their campaign to include people from our procurement team, who I hadn’t thought to forewarn.

So not long after, I received a message from one of my procurement team colleagues who’d been forwarded that LinkedIn message from their senior manager with an instruction to deal with this. I explained to my colleague that, as far as I could tell, this Monotype campaign was similar to the domain name scams the procurement team is already familiar with. So please sit tight till our digital team colleagues have completed their audit and then we’ll figure out which one person should start the conversation with Monotype.

But, like any successful phishing campaign, the Monotype rep’s LinkedIn messages eventually reached someone who did respond. This was another person in the procurement team and, just to be completely clear, I don’t blame them for responding. They were just doing their job of protecting our business from potential copyright liability.

Being forced to deal with the issue

Since I’d handed this over to the digital team, I hadn’t kept track of how things were progressing. I was brought back into the discussion when our brand manager included me in an email thread between her and the procurement person who’d responded to Monotype.

I quickly brought this second procurement person up to speed with our earlier plan of action and then I looped in the digital team again. Turns out the digital team had completed their audit, found that we were in compliance, but had gotten busy with other work so no one had responded to Monotype. *sigh*

Screenshot from the TV series ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ showing the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard sitting in the captain’s chair with his hand covering his face, typically referred to as a “face palm” gesture.

Now, of course, everyone was on the back foot because our new procurement rep had shared the PDF that Monotype had sent, listing all the places where we were using Monotype fonts without a proper licence.

And, to quote from the procurement rep’s email:

Supplier has confirmed two options:

Past Use License Agreement is used (PULA) to cover the usage for the period without a license if the software is to be removed.

Process the PULA with a Go Forward license agreement to allow compliant continued use of the fonts in use.

Reading that, I got this procurement rep to quickly convene a meeting with everyone involved, though it turned out the person from the digital team who’d done the font audit had gone on annual leave.

The rest of the digital team didn’t know anything about font licencing and this was the first time this procurement rep was dealing with font licencing as well. So, partly spurred on by their senior manager’s instruction to deal with this, the procurement rep was seriously considering paying the licencing fee that Monotype had asked for, just to make this whole headache go away.

This is where I jumped in and told everyone to hold up. I said I would take the lead on this internally and I would take over the discussion we were having with Monotype as well. The procurement rep, I think somewhat relieved to have this taken out of their hands, agreed.

Why did I insist on taking this over? Two reasons:

  • I’m a bit of a typography nerd so I know what I’m talking about and

  • a quick look at the document Monotype had sent over with the list our alleged copyright infringements had told me that everything the Monotype rep was alleging was wrong.

Screenshot from the film ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ in which the character Luke Skywalker is saying, “Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.”

Never send an AI to do a human’s job

An April 2025 blog post from Studio Twofold’s Jamie Walker titled ‘Unlicensed Fonts: The Hidden Risk in your Branding’ opens with:

Lately, we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in copyright issues related to both images and fonts. Several clients have reached out after receiving emails about fonts [an] agency used on their site years ago.

Naturally, they’re a bit rattled — and with good reason. These kinds of copyright claims can come with hefty fees if you’re found to be in breach.

Further down Jamie writes:

Smaller businesses can get caught off guard — and with AI now scanning the web for even the tiniest copyright infringements, it’s more important than ever to stay protected.

Think they’re only picking on the small guys? Think again. Even giants have been caught out – proving no one is too big to face the music (or in this case, the typography).

Basically, the reason so many organisations are getting out-of-the-blue copyright claims these days is because major copyright holders have started using automated, AI-powered copyright infringement detection software, of which there is a lot out there. *sigh*

Monotype seems to have used one of these products too, because the two fonts its report claimed we were using without a valid licence are:

Let’s take those one at a time, shall we?

Screenshot from the film ‘The Princess Bride’ in which the character Inigo Montoya is saying, “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

What’s in a name?

The first thing I did as I read the report was look up the Credit Cards font on MyFonts.com, Monotype’s online store front.

Credit Cards is a pictogram font that contains these icons:

Screenshot from the MyFonts.com website showing the glyphs contained within the Credit Cards font.

When I saw that I thought to myself, “Why would we want to use those icons in our apps?”

Next I read Monotype’s report in detail and saw this screenshot. This is from an analysis of our app’s payload and is the apparent proof that Credit Cards is being used in our smartphone apps:

Screenshot of a table in a PDF file showing a 70 kilobyte size font file with the extension TTF and the filename, “CREDC” followed by three underscore characters.

Having worked with a great many font files over the years, when I saw that filename I thought to myself, “Are we sure that’s actually the Credit Cards font that Monotype claims it is?”

So I checked. I did a web search for fonts with “credit card” in their name and very quickly found one called ‘Credit Card’ – singular – from K-Type. This is a regular text font (as opposed to an icon font) that looks like the raised text that’s printed on credit cards.

Screenshot from the K-Type website showing the description and sales page of a font named Credit Card. The description starts with, “Credit Card is an all capitals font for simulating bank cards.”

Now that I was something I could see us using in our apps.

Happily, Credit Card is free for personal use so I downloaded it and looked at the zip file. And guess what the filename of the font is?

Screenshot of software showing the contents of a zip file. A file among this list is highlighted. Its name is “CREDC” followed by three underscore characters. It has the extension TTF and is approximately 70 kilobytes in size.

Yup, the filename is CREDC___.ttf – which is exactly the filename that was in the app payload analysis from Monotype.

Seeing this, I reached out to my design team contact who then got me in touch with the person who manages our smartphone apps. From them I found out that, sure enough, the only font over and above Open Sans that we use in our smartphone apps is Credit Card by K-Type.

SCORE: Ameel 1, Monotype 0

Proxima Nova, really?

Unlike the Credit Cards font, our use of Mark Simonson’s Proxima Nova was never in contention. We clearly use it in one of our project websites. My employer didn’t actually build that website – we bought this under-construction project from another entity – but this website is very much our responsibility now.

The problem for Monotype here was that it no longer sells licences to Proxima Nova. There was a time you could buy a licence to Proxima Nova from Fonts.com, which was Linotype’s online marketplace. But Monotype bought Linotype and eventually killed off Fonts.com and, some time after that (I don’t know when or why), the font’s designer stopped selling licences to Proxima Nova through MyFonts.com.

Screenshot from the MyFonts website showing a page with an error message that reads, “The font is no longer available for purchase”.

Of course learning this fact didn’t mean that I was just going to stop my investigation. I reached out to a person, who reached out to a person, who reached out to the design agency that designed (and still maintains) our project website. The design agency contact did their own investigation and quickly confirmed that, yes, they do indeed have a licence to use Proxima Nova on this site – one that they had purchased from Adobe several years ago.

SCORE: Ameel 2, Monotype 0

Closing the book on this whole affair

Armed with this knowledge, I got the procurement person to introduce me to the Monotype rep. The rep and one of their colleagues were very eager to talk, replying to this introductory email within fifteen minutes. They wanted to organise a meeting so they could finally get the font licencing agreement signed. Instead what they got was a long email from me in which I explained the situation in detail, complete with annotated screenshots like the one above :)

The Monotype rep chewed on this for a few days and then made one final attempt at getting money out of us. They agreed that they were currently unable to sell a licence to Proxima Nova, but it turns out Monotype is one of K-Type’s authorised resellers and [they] “currently cannot see the license on our files for this use” – meaning there wasn’t a record of us purchasing a licence to Credit Card from Monotype. So could we please “confirm if there is one that we for some reason are unable to see in our systems?”.

*sigh*

I wrote back and told them the reason Monotype doesn’t have a record of this licence is because we purchased a one-off Enterprise Licence directly from K-Type several years ago.

This was several weeks ago and I haven’t heard a peep from them since.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Graphic showing cracked green paint on pavement on top of which white coloured text has been overlaid. The text is a quote from Ben Goldacre that reads, “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that”.

Two sides to the story

Despite my making light of the situation, I don’t actually hate Monotype for doing this. Using fonts without purchasing a proper license (or purchasing the fonts outright) is stealing and you absolutely should not do it.

The fact that font licensing can be a complicated issue is not an excuse; lots of things are complicated and we figure them out.

More importantly, I think the type designers and type foundries that create fonts should be fairly compensated for their work. Paying for fonts, or an ongoing licence to those fonts, is how you do that.

In short, you should pay for fonts and you should call out people and organisations when they use fonts without a proper licence.

(For completeness’ sake, I should say that I also don’t mind that Monotype used automated systems to find copyright violations. The internet is so large that it’s impossible to manually find all the people who have stolen your stuff!)

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it

That said, I hate how Monotype’s business development people went about doing this. Much like the blatantly overzealous content blockers on YouTube, the Monotype reps who reached out to us didn’t even bother to verify whether the report their AI spat out at them showed an actual copyright violation or not.

I mean, I know why they didn’t double-check. Just like with scammers and phishers, this is a volume game, not an accuracy or fairness game. You bombard people with messages, scaring them with your (potentially unverified) claims, and eventually some of the thousands of people you’ve messaged will reply. You then rush these folks into paying a licence fee because your targets don’t have enough information about font licencing and, frankly, they just want the problem to go away. This is a shitty way to do business and it reflects poorly on your organisation.

Screenshot from the Nebula.tv website showing a documentary with the title ‘Nebula Sans’. The short description of this documentary reads, “The story of a font built on principle, free to use for anyone who needs it.”

You’re not making any friends

Not that reputation seems to matter too much to popular digital marketplaces – Amazon being the poster child for this. They’re big, they’re arguably enshittified, and all they appear to care about is making as much money as possible.

I mean there’s a reason why so many type designers urge people not to licence fonts – even their own fonts – from MyFonts and instead buy or licence fonts directly from designer and type foundry websites. And, barring that, buying or licencing fonts from smaller, independent stores like Fontspring instead.

This is also why TypeType and Fontstand offer font subscriptions that are alternatives to those from Adobe Fonts and Monotype.

And this is why, for example, the independent video streaming site Nebula was forced to design their custom Nebula Sans font. Nebula’s website and streaming apps used to use the Screen Smart version of the Whitney font from Hoefler&Co. But when Monotype purchased Hoefler&Co, the new Monotype licencing/royalty structure meant that a licence to Whitney was suddenly unaffordable to Nebula. Since paying that (apparently much) higher amount to Monotype wasn’t going to be financially sustainable, Nebula instead paid Paul D. Hunt, the original designer of the excellent Source Sans font, to modify his font so it would be a drop-in replacement for Whitney in all of Nebula’s digital products. And because Source Sans was released under the SIL Open Font License, Nebula also released Nebula Sans under this OFL.

If that’s how much effort folks are willing to make to to avoid using your company, you probably already know that you’re not very well loved.

Screenshot of a website banner that shows the date range, “November 6 – December 4” and reads, in fancy, bright-pink, all capital letters, “cyber sale” and, “shop now”.

What do do?

So what’s my take-away from all this?

  • Don’t use scammy tactics to scare people into purchasing your shit. And if you are going to use those tactics, at least don’t be wrong about it!

  • If anything like this happens to you or your employer, find the relevant nerd in your friend group or organisation and ask for their help.

  • If you can, avoid licencing fonts from Monotype. Get your fonts directly from the original designers and type foundries, or maybe from smaller, independent marketplaces like Fontspring (which has its big annual “cyber sale” on till 4 December, by the way).

  • If you’d rather avoid the hassle of font licencing altogether, then do what my employer did and pick an excellent, versatile OFL font and use that instead. Though, if you want to stand out from the crowd, please consider avoiding the most popular fonts on Google Fonts.

Oh, and while I’m far from an expert on typography, if you need a hand with anything font-related, please reach out. I’d be happy to help in any way that I can :)

Using Joplin to sync notes on Linux

In my last post I talked about being forced to drop Sync.com as my cloud file synchronisation solution when I moved to Linux because Sync doesn’t have a native Linux client. (I now use the excellent, cross-platform Tresorit, fyi.)

You know what I didn’t have to drop when I moved to Linux because it does have an excellent Linux client? Joplin, my open-source, cloud-synchronised note taking solution.

Screenshot of the Joplin website home page. A large graphic at the top of the page explains that "Joplin is an open source note-taking app."

The tools I use to stay in sync

These are all the tools I use to keep my thoughts, notes, lists, tasks, and bookmarks synchronised across my four primary personal devices (desktop computer, laptop computer, tablet, and smartphone) and, when needed, my two work devices (laptop computer and work smartphone).

Long, secure notes: Joplin

The primary tool I use to capture all my thinking, planning, researching, documenting, and cataloguing is Joplin (created and maintained by London-based developer Laurent Cozic).

I love Joplin because:

  • it’s free (though I support its development via a Patreon membership),

  • it’s open source (at least the desktop client is),

  • it’s cross-platform (yay Linux client!),

  • it lets you use a range of back-end cloud storage options to sync your notes (otherwise at heart it’s an offline-first note-taking app),

  • it lets you use Markdown to structure you text, and

  • it provides end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for all you notes.

Unlike a lot of other, and perhaps, more popular note-taking tools – the commercial kind that you have to pay for – Joplin isn’t trying to be the everything-tool for everyone. It does a few things, and it does those well. It is relatively uncomplicated and its apps are all lightweight.

I especially like that you can choose among a bunch of cloud storage options to store and sync your notes in the back end. I already have 1TB of space on OneDrive (through our Microsoft 365 Family subscription) so I use that to sync my notes. And since all my notes are end-to-end encrypted, I have no security or privacy concerns with using OneDrive’s cloud storage for this purpose.

(Joplin has since launched Joplin Cloud to provide its own back-end cloud note-syncing functionality. This back-end synchronisation server is the only part of Joplin that’s not open-source.)

Short, casual notes: Google Keep

I use Google Keep because it consistently has the fastest and most reliable note synchronisation. Also, its lightweight apps works brilliantly on Android, iOS, and the web.

Content in Keep is (surprisingly for Google) private, but I don’t save anything secret here because your notes can still be subpoenaed.

Kanban board: KanbanFlow

KanbanFlow is a simple, lightweight kanban board / project management tool from CodeKick out of Gothenburg, Sweden.

I don’t use this for project management though, I use it to maintain the lists of books, TV series, and movies I want to watch next. (I’ve written about this use case before, if you’re interested.)

If I did need a project management tool though, I’d switch to the paid version of KanbanFlow.

(Trello used to be my preferred kanban tool but its developers kept adding features I didn’t want or need, to the point that it was no longer a fun, easy, lightweight web or smartphone app to use. It got even more complicated to use after Atlassian purchased it and added it to their suite of team-oriented products.)

Screenshot of the KanbanFlow website home page. A heading at the top of the page reads, "Lean project management. Simplified." and, "Boost your personal or team productivity".

Shopping and other lists: Microsoft To Do

Nadia and I have tried a bunch of list-making apps over the years, but Microsoft’s To Do is the simplest, most convenient, and most reliable of the lot.

(Our Family subscription to Microsoft 365 is why this app was even an option for us in the first place, by the way.)

Bookmarks and read-later links: Pinboard

Pinboard is an incredibly simple, very fast, and super efficient, web-based bookmarking tool that lets you bookmark webpages and, importantly, tag them for easy indexing.

It also has an ‘unread’ tag that lets you use this as a place to store all your read-later links. My read-later app of choice used to be the now-defunct Pocket, but I switched to Pinboard a few years ago and never looked back.

(For completeness’ sake I should mention that I use Firefox and Vivaldi browser accounts to sync my day-to-day web bookmarks, browsing history, and browser settings.)

Passwords and TOTP: Bitwarden, Aegis Authenticator

I use the amazing, open-source Bitwarden to generate, store, and sync all my passwords and the fantastic, open-source Aegis Authenticator to generate all my time-based one-time passcodes (TOTP).

Why sync notes in the first place?

Growing up I captured my notes, thoughts, and shopping lists using paper notebooks, notepads, and lined notepaper that I stored and organised in ring binders (complete with dividers and colour-coded tabs).

Once I got a job and stopped needing to carry ring binders around, I took notes on nicer notebooks from Moleskine, Leuchtturm 1917, and Field Notes. These paper-based methods saw me through my bachelors degree, masters degree, several jobs, and even my bullet journaling era (like in the scanned page above).

These days its easier to carry only a smartphone in your pocket instead of also carrying a notepad and pen with you everywhere. I’m more digital than most people, so it was inevitable that my note-taking would go all-digital sooner rather than later.

That switch happened in 2010 when I got an Evernote account and moved all my note-taking online. I loved Evernote because I could easily organise, index, and search through my notes. I could also access all of my notes, all of the time, regardless of where I was and which digital device I happened to be using.

The rise and fall of Evernote

Evernote was great in those early days so I signed up to a Premium subscription in 2012. I loved using it for everything from note taking, to cataloguing recipes, to saving blog posts and newspaper articles for later reading,

But as its desktop, web, and smartphone apps became increasingly complicated, bloated, and slow, the less I wanted to use it.

Evernote eventually went down the enshittification route so I dropped it altogether, as did many others.

Screenshot of an email from Evernote with the heading, "Keep Evernote on all your devices" that explains, "In 30 days you will be able to sync your notes to a maximum of 2 devices using Evernote Basic".

Short foray into OneNote and Google Docs

I tried Microsoft’s OneNote for a while because I’d bought a tablet PC and OneNote let me take hand-written notes (using the stylus) on its desktop version – like in the screenshot below.

However OneNote didn’t have cloud sync to begin with, and when that functionality did arrive, is wasn’t particularly good, so I stopped using this too. (It was also always slower than Evernote and too unstructured for my liking anyway.)

Screenshot from the OneNote app showing a page titled 'What We Do' that contains a hand-drawn diagram showing the water cycle from rain to ocean-runoff.

For a while I also explored taking all my notes in Google Docs and storing everything in a specific note-taking folder. This worked fine for some longer, more complicated notes, but it was never convenient for everything. Google Docs is optimised for document writing, not simple note taking, after all.

Settling down with Joplin and, at work, plain text files

Eventually I found Joplin, fell in love with it, and then migrated all my personal notes over in January 2020. I haven’t found, or even needed to look for, a better alternative since.

Funnily enough, a version of that notes-in-Google-Docs idea is what I ended up adopting for note-taking at work. For several years now I’ve been taking all my work notes in plain old text files that I edit using Notepad++ and store in my work OneDrive.

I use a combination of four text files:

  • tasks.txt, in which I maintain a list of daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly tasks for myself and my team

  • coordination.txt, in which I jot down my meeting notes

  • projects.txt, in which I write notes about the large projects I’m working on

  • people.txt, into which I take notes during the one-on-one meetings I have with my manager and my direct reports

Every Monday I create new versions of those text files (with Monday’s date in the filename), deleting notes from previous weeks that I no longer need for my current work. This way my active files remain short and focused, and it’s still pretty easy for me to search through earlier weeks’ files if I need to find something older.

(I used to use Trello at work for tracking personal tasks, coordinating team tasks, and for managing team projects, but our IT team “rationalised” our suite of tools and now we’re stuck with Microsoft Planner which is…not great.)

Screenshot from OneDrive showing a list of text files in a folder titled 'Meeting notes'. The text files shown are called Projects and Tasks and they all have a date included in the filename.

Investigating alternatives (or not)

I said I haven’t felt the need to look for Joplin alternatives, and that’s true, but I did play around with Standard Notes for a little while. This is a paid service that I thought might be a good, E2EE alternative to Google Keep. Unfortunately it was slow to sync and its app was glitchy on my phone so I didn’t trial it for long.

And before you ask, I’ve never bothered with tools like Notion, Obsidian, Logseq, and their ilk. Those are all too complicated – they’re a “knowledge base”, a “workspace”, and other fancy descriptors like that – plus I feel paid apps like Notion will eventually go down the enshittification route, just like Evernote did. Notion is already touting itself as the “the AI workspace where teams and AI agents get more done together”. Ugh.

Happy days

To summarise, these are the tools I use:

Oh, and I use plain old text files (using Notepad++) for taking notes at work.

It’s taken me a while to get to where I am and I’m very happy with the set of tools I’ve settled on.

Do you have a primary note-taking tool? If so, what is it? I’d love to know.

[Photo walk] Around the northern suburbs of Melbourne, part 8

I’ve been wanting a wide-angle camera lens for a while, but I didn’t need one enough to justify spending serious money to buy it. [1]

Happily, the folks from TTArtisan released their AF 14mm F3.5 prime lens (21mm full-frame equivalent) with a Fujifilm X Mount a few months ago and I just bought one for myself when it went on sale :)

Here are the photos I took with this lens during a recent walk Nadia and took around the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Public barbecue and gazebo in a local park

Wide-angle photo of a public barbecue and a rectangular gazebo that's covering a table and two benches. This barbecue area has been built right next to a children's play area.

Rope gym for older kids at a local playground

Wide-angle photo of playground equipment in a local park. The equipment consists of poles, bars, and ladders made out of metal with ropes and handles tied all around them, making for a challenging traverse across to the other side.

Bottom of the slide – wide

Wide-angle photo looking up from the bottom of a bright orange coloured children’s slide in a local park.

Bottom of the slide – tall

Wide-angle photo looking up from the bottom of a bright orange coloured children’s slide in a local park.

Closed community footy ground on a bright afternoon

Photo of the shaded veranda of a brick building at a local Australian rules football ground.

Closed canteen at a community footy ground

Photo of a shuttered-closed canteen window at a local Australian rules football ground.

Hadfield Hawks Canteen is closed post-season

Photo of a shuttered-closed canteen window at a local Australian rules football ground. A printed canteen menu has been attached to shutters on the side of the window, with the title, ‘Hadfield Haws Canteen Menu’ and menu item prices written in whiteboard marker.

Slow down

Close-up photo of a concrete footpath with a white-coloured ‘slow down’ warning painted on it.

Slow down your walking

Close-up photo of a concrete footpath with a white-coloured ‘slow down’ warning painted on it. The front of the photographer's black-and-white sneakers are visible in the bottom of the frame.

I really like this lens!

TTArtisan makes solid, low-cost lenses that have an interesting character that (a) I like and (b) works really well for the type of photography that I do.

I now have three TTArtisan prime lenses [2]:

And I’m super happy with all of them! Here’s to many more photos with this lens trio :)

[1] The Fujifilm 16mm prime lens costs around $570 on sale and the Fujifilm 14mm prime lens costs around $1,300 on sale. The TTArtisan 14mm prime lens, on the other hand, costs just under $200 when its not on sale!

[2] I’ll probably (almost definitely) also buy the TTArtisan AF 75mm F2 lens whenever it goes on sale :)

Using Tresorit to sync files on Linux

The ability to automatically synchronise files across devices via the internet (and also save a copy in the cloud) hasn’t been around for very long.

Heck, most people didn’t have multiple devices to sync files across till the early 2000s. And when we did get start using multiple devices, we used floppy discs, USB sticks, and external hard drives to move our files around.

Early forays: Dropbox and Google Drive

I started my file sync journey in July 2011 with Dropbox, but I moved quickly to Google Drive just two days after Google Drive launched in April 2012.

I upgraded to a paid Google Drive plan in May 2014, which gave me a massive 100GB of storage space. A few storage-space upgrades later and I’m currently on a 2TB plan.

I need all that space because, since 2004, I’ve been storing all my full-resolution camera and smartphone photos and videos on Google Photos (which is part of Google Drive). [1] And Google Drive is still what I use when I need to share large files with folks other than Nadia.

Screenshot of a 2012 email from Google welcoming the recipient to their new Google Drive account.

Private and secure: Sync.com

While I love Google Drive and its technology, it is not a secure place to store your private, sensitive, or secret files. So since December 2019, I’ve been using the excellent Sync.com to securely store and sync my files across devices.

Sync does end-to-end-encryption (E2EE), meaning your files are encrypted before they leave your computer using a passphrase only you know. That means no one at Sync can decrypt your files. Nor, for that matter, can a government that subpoenas your files or a hacker that steals your files from Sync’s servers.

I love Sync and have been using its paid, 2TB storage-space tier for almost six years. Unfortunately, Sync does not have a Linux client. So with my recent switch to MX Linux on my desktop, I needed to find a new, cross-platform cloud sync and storage provider.

Screenshot of the Sync.com website home page. A large graphic at the top of the page has the title, "Cloud storage built for privacy" and text that reads, "Sync keeps your files safe, secure, and 100% private with end-to-end encryption".

Cloud storage vs cloud sync

There are several great cloud storage providers you can use in 2025, but very few that also offer cloud sync functionality. What’s the difference between the cloud storage and sync?

With cloud storage your files are saved primarily in the cloud. This frees up space on your computer, such as a laptop with limited hard drive space, because once you add a file to your cloud storage folder, it gets uploaded to the cloud and then deleted from your local machine.

What you’re left with on your computer is a file link that will automatically download a temporary copy your file when you click on it and then keep this file open in a viewer, player, or editor. The instant you close this file, its new version (if any) will be reuploaded to the cloud and the version left on your computer will be deleted.

With cloud sync your files are saved primarily on your computers. These files are copied to the cloud and then synchronised across the devices that you connect to this service.

Both types of services keep your files in sync, but only cloud sync creates local/offline copies your files and then keeps those in sync across multiple locations (ie your devices and the cloud).

I wanted a cloud sync solution, not a cloud storage solution. I have two 2TB solid-state hard drives and one 8TB spinning hard drive installed in my desktop, I don’t need to free up space here! Importantly, I always want a local copy of all my files.

So while I explored and trialled services like pCloud, Internxt, and Dropbox Advanced (which offers E2EE, though only in designated folders), among a few others, the only one that offered actual file syncing in Linux was Swiss Post’s Tresorit.

Screenshot of the Tresorit website home page. A large graphic at the top of the page had the heading, "Tresorit - secure file exchange & collaboration made easy" and a button that reads, "Try for free".

Before you ask…

Before you ask, yes, I could have “rolled my own cloud” using Nextcloud, either at home or with a third-party Nextcloud provider. Doing so was going to be too much of a hassle (plus an additional expense) and I didn’t want the responsibility of managing my own cloud storage.

I could also have used a tool like Cryptomator to encrypt all my files before uploading them to a service like Google Drive (where I already have lots of storage space). I tried this and it didn’t work very well on my Linux install, and I wasn’t going to trust my file sync with something that wasn’t bulletproof. Also, Google Drive only offers cloud storage on Linux, not cloud sync, so that wouldn’t have worked anyway.

Finally, I could have used rclone to encrypt and sync all my files using existing services like Google Drive as the back-end. The configuration and maintenance hassle of setting this up was too much effort. Also, this solution wouldn’t have given me the added functionality of being able to share files securely with Nadia.

Oh, and I couldn’t use something like Syncthing because that only does direct device-to-device file syncing and the devices I wanted to keep in sync weren’t going to be switched on and connected to the internet at the same time. That means I needed a solution with an intermediate cloud-storage step. (And with Syncthing I also wouldn’t have been able to share files security with Nadia.) [2]

The one service I would have used, had it been available for Linux, was Proton Drive since this offers both file sync and E2EE. Nadia and I are also on a Proton Duo plan so this wouldn’t have cost us any extra either. Unfortunately, Proton Drive’s native Linux app isn’t ready yet and probably won’t be ready for another year or two (it’s on the product roadmap but is not a priority).

Photo of a puffy, bright white dog on a leash. The dog is standing in a large, green field and is looking at another dog off camera.

Going all-in on Tresorit

So after weeks of research and testing of multiple tools and online services, I trialled Tresorit and then subscribed to an annual, individual SecureCloud plan with 1TB of storage space. Shortly after that, I signed Nadia up to one of these plans as well.

I have now synced my desktop computer’s Documents, Music, Pictures, Templates, and a few other folders to Tresorit.

On my laptop I’ve done a selective sync and synchronised only the Documents folder. This way the files that I use most often on my laptop, which are all in the Documents folder, are always in sync with my desktop. Meanwhile, all the other (usually larger) files that I don’t use as often are just a quick download away for when I need them on my laptop.

How am I liking Tresorit? I love it!

The initial file upload process took a while – I was uploading around 400GB of data, after all! – but I’ve been using Tresorit for almost two months now and its Linux app is rock solid and its sync speeds are good.

Overall, I am very happy with my decision and I’m glad I found a great alternative to Sync. Yes, I am paying a little more than I was for Sync (a Canadian company), but businesses in Europe tend to pay more taxes and also treat their employees better, and I’m all for supporting healthy, happy, sustainable workplaces :)

Would I recommend Tresorit to others? Absolutely! Especially if you’re after a great, cross-platform, cloud sync (and cloud storage) solution for yourself or your business.

[1] In 2004 this was called Picasa, with its Picasa Web Albums functionality. Google Photos succeeded Picasa in May 2015.

[2] I do, however, use Syncthing to sync files between my desktop and Android phone. These are mainly the FLAC and MP3 files I use to listen to high-resolution music on my phone.

[Photo walk] Around the city, part 1

I took these photos back in June but never got around to uploading them thanks to a bout of post-viral fatigue. Better late than never!

Dubai chocolate egg tarts at #1000 Bread on Swanston Street

Close-up photo of a tray of egg tarts in a bakery display window.

Cube croissants at #1000 Bread on Swanston Street

Close-up photo of a tray matcha cube croissants and blueberry cube croissants in a bakery display window. A small paper label stuck to the top of each croissant reads, “#1000 Bread”

Waiting for the Koko Black baristas on Swanston Street

Photo of a Koko Black coffee stand on the sidewalk of a metropolitan city. Two baristas are making coffee at the coffee machines along the back of the stand. In the foreground are a woman and a girl waiting for their drinks, with the girl gripping the back of woman's jacket with her hand.

Tram-track crossing on Swanston Street

Photo looking straight down at a metal plate embedded into the road surface on top of which two tram tracks cross each other at an acute angle. The photographer's white sneakers are visible in the bottom of the photo frame.

Tagged Silver Gull at Federation Square

Close-up, black-and-white photo of a bird with silver-grey wings with white head staring straight at the camera. A small plastic ring attached to the bird's left leg indicates that it has been tagged.

[Photo walk] Walking around the city and suburbs, part 1

Here are some photos from my recent walks abound Melbourne city and its various suburbs.

Life-size statue in a manicured garden

Photo of a manicured residential garden in which there is a full-size stone statue of a woman in traditional European clothes pouring water out of a bucket.

Reflecting the neighbouring building

Photo looking down at a tall office building with an all-glass exterior. A reflection of the less-tall, neighbouring residential building can be seen in the exterior of the first building.

Australian Ballet fashion capsule for Melbourne Fashion Week 2025

Photo of several high-fashion ballet costumes arranged on mannequins and other display stands in the massive foyer of an office building.

Cafe tables accommodating the slope of the footpath

Photo of two long, outdoor, wood-and-iron cafe tables and their accompanying benches. The tables are placed outside the building where the footpath is sloping downwards towards the street. The legs on one long side of the table are taller than the legs on the other side, resulting in the eating surfaces of the tables being perfectly horizontal.

Statues above the entrance of the Former AMP Building

Photo of the front archway of a 1920s office building with a pink Casterton granite and Sydney freestone facade. Above this entrance are statues of three adults and one child, with all three adults looking down to street level. The Latin phrase “amicus certus in re incerta cernitur” (meaning “a true friend is discovered in times of uncertainty”) is engraved on a plaque below these statues.

Looking through the hallway at the former Commercial Bank of Australia building

Photo of the hallway than runs through the middle of a baroque 1890s building with a Chicago-style facade and fittings.

Schoolboy at a bus stop, as seen through a wooden pallet

Photo taken through the bottom part of a wooden pallet, where the forklift's forks go. Behind the pallet is a wooden, cyan-coloured bus shelter with a single bench. Seated on this bench is a schoolboy, though you can only see his black shows, grey pants, and red-and-grey striped tie dangling between his legs.

No

Close-up photo of the white-coloured, all-caps “no” of a “no parking” sign painted on a road.

Why I picked MX Linux over other Linux distros

When I moved my desktop PC from Windows to Linux a few months ago, the Linux distribution I picked was MX Linux. In this post I explain why.

What’s a Linux distribution?

In case you’re new to Linux and don’t know what a “distribution” is:

A Linux distribution, often shortened to “distro,” is a packaged version of Linux that comes with the Linux kernel plus a collection of software and utilities that make the OS functional and user-friendly.

If you want to know more, here are a few resources to get you up started, with the quote above coming from the first one in this list:

Graphic showing the logos and titles of nine Linux distributions: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, MX Linux, Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, Slackware, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE

How do you choose a Linux distro?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blog posts, articles, and videos on how to choose a Linux distro that’ll work best for you.

Here are two good articles:

And if you’re already familiar with Linux, here’s an excellent interactive guide (available in 19 languages, no less!) that walks your through the process:

Most of these resources ask you to consider a bunch of factors that will help you create a short list of distros to try.

Narrowing down the list of suitable distros

I used a combined list of those decision-factors to add and remove distros from my eventual shortlist.

My level of experience with Linux: intermediate-to-advanced. I have enough experience with Linux that I am comfortable diagnosing issues and looking/asking for help. This let me keep specialised and potentially complicated distros in my list.

Effort I want to make in building and maintaining my system: low-to-medium. Even though I can, I don’t want to do lots of tinkering and exploring with my operating system (OS). I just want my OS to disappear into the background while I do other things. Because of this, I removed most specialised and complicated distros from my list.

Package management preference, if any: ideally, APT. This let me remove all Arch-based distros from my shortlist, for example (though that was partly also in response to the effort question, above).

Operating system look-and-feel (eg for people new to Linux, we ask: Windows-like or Mac-like?): Windows-like, though highly customisable. Basically, I wanted to use KDE Plasma as my desktop environment. I kind of also didn’t have a choice because, unlike GNOME and Cinnamon, KDE does an actually good job with fractional scaling (eg scaling the whole screen up to 125%) and I needed this functionality for my laptop. [1]

Hardware compatibility requirements (especially if you have much older or much newer hardware): mixed. My desktop computer is only a year old, with an NVIDIA RTX4080 graphics card, so I needed a distro that could support recent hardware. This removed a bunch if distros from contention. My desktop is also attached to an ultra-widescreen monitor that supports high dynamic range (HDR) colour. I was hoping to find a distro that could take full advantage of this capability but, sadly, that was not to be and I’ve had to switch my monitor to its standard dynamic range (SDR) mode. My peripherals, on the other hand, are either older or more readily compatible with Linux so none of those were an issue. Finally, I wanted to run the same distro on my desktop and my laptop, but my laptop is an older (2021), refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad so that was never going to pose any compatibility issues.

Software compatibility requirements (only really relevant if you’re a gamer, coder, multimedia creator, or other type of specialist user; or someone with specific accessibility requirements): gamer/multimedia creator. I wanted the ability to play games through Steam (nothing very new or resource-intensive) and the ability to do multimedia editing (audio, video, photography). I didn’t need a gaming- or multimedia-focused distro to do all this though, so these requirements didn’t add or remove anything from the list.

Default software preferences: none. I’m happy to install all the software I need (ie I don’t need my distro to pre-install anything for me), so this preference didn’t add or remove anything from the list either.

Distro community size (aka your potential tech support needs, because larger and more well-known distros tend to have more users, a wider install base, and more online answers to questions you might have along the way): medium-to-large. Because my desktop hardware is relatively new, I knew I’d need a bit of support for it, so I wanted a more tried-and-true distro. This eliminated a bunch of smaller distros. Though, as luck would have it, I’d end up eliminating almost all the super-popular distros for other reasons. Oh well.

System stability (which basically boils down the the choice between a super stable OS or one that gets more frequent OS and software updates): more stable than not. I like using the latest and greatest software and hardware, but I don’t need to do so. And while I didn’t particularly want to be on an Long Term Support (LTS) release schedule, which is typically on a two-year cycle, I also didn’t want to be on a rolling release, in which new features added as soon as they’re stable enough.

FOSS ideological preferences: no strong preference. I prefer to use free and open-source (FOSS) software over proprietary software whenever I can, but I’m perfectly happy to use proprietary software as well.

Big-tech ideological preferences: avoid big-tech as much as possible. I’m trying hard to stay away from “big tech” as much as I can – that term being relative in the Linux world. I don’t like larger companies that enshittify their products or try to throw their weight around in the community. This basically meant avoiding Canonical, and therefore all flavours of Ubuntu, and IBM-owned Red Hat, which makes only enterprise versions of Linux so none of their products were in contention anyway. (openSUSE is the only large tech company in the Linux space that I like.)

Willingness to pay: happy to. Almost all end-user Linux distros are free, but a couple charge an optional small amount to help fund their development and I’m someone who regularly provides financial support to the software and online services that I use. So when I came across a Zorin OS Pro – a very polished, very Windows-like distro that charges an optional one-time payment of AUD $78 – it jumped to the top of my list before being quickly eliminated because it uses GNOME and not KDE. Oh well.

Privacy preferences: consumer-level strict. Most Linux distros offer great privacy, but a handful connect to third-parties or collect telemetry data, meaning they have the ability to track how you’re using your computer. I absolutely do not want to use technology that tracks me, but I’m also not a privacy nut – meaning I’m not going to use Tails or Kali Linux, which I would say are “professional-level strict” with their privacy and security. This basically just meant that I eliminated all the distros created by Canonical.

Creating my shortlist

Since the KDE Plasma desktop environment is such a foundational part of my requirements, I first searched for the most recommended KDE-based distros [2] and came up with this initial shortlist – though each entry came with caveats:

  • Kubuntu. Kubuntu is a Canonical product so I couldn’t use it out of the box. I’d have to run some post-install scripts to get rid of snap package support and Canonical’s telemetry.

  • TUXEDO OS. This distro is made for TUXEDO branded computers but the OS itself can be installed on other computers as well.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is a rolling release, but it is a very stable one so I’m okay with that. However its package manager is Zypper (which uses RPM packages) and not APT (which uses DEB packages) so that’d be a bit of a compromise.

  • Fedora KDE. Fedora has a fixed release cycle (updated every six months) and uses the DNF package manager (which uses RPM packages) so not exactly what I was after. Also it doesn’t have great support for newer hardware and proprietary software. But this is a distro I used for many years on my old laptop, so it’s something I’m quite familiar with.

My initial shortlist was concerning because the first distro is created by Canonical (which I’m trying to avoid) and the last two distros use RPM packages (which some of the software I want to use doesn’t have support for), leaving me with just a single option – which isn’t a short list as such.

So after searching for more recommended KDE-based distros, and then going through the long list of factors above and slightly relaxing one or two of my requirements (ie allowing for less well-known and less frequently-updated distros), I added two other distros to my final shortlist:

  • Nitrux OS. Nitrux has a smaller install base and is based on Debian.

  • MX Linux. MX has a medium-sized install base and is also based on Debian.

The cool thing with both distros is that they’re based on Debian and not Ubuntu. There are many, many Debian guides and resources out there so, even if I couldn’t find a specific Nitrux OS or MX Linux guide for any issue I might have, there’s a good change I’d find a Debian-specific guide instead.

Oh, and before you ask: I didn’t shortlist Debian itself because of its slower, two-year release cycle. I wanted something with at least slightly more frequent releases, which MX Linux has with its point releases.

Photo of the silhouette of a person wearing a hoodie sitting in a dark room in front of several flat screen monitors that are displaying colourful lines of software code and text

Photo by Kevin Horvat on Unsplash

Testing my shortlist

The cool thing with Linux is that you don’t have to rely on other people’s opinions on which distro will work best for you.

Yes, you can watch a tonne of review and comparison videos, but you can – and you should – just run each distro off a “live USB” (aka bootable USB) and try it out for yourself.

You can then install all your distros – either one after the other or in all of them parallel on the same computer or same live USB – and play around with them for a bit before committing to the one you like best.

So that’s what I set out to do.

Happily (or unhappily, depending on how you look at it) just the live-USB step eliminated three of distros:

  • Fedora KDE wouldn’t even boot! I installed its bootable ISO to multiple USB sticks using different installers (Fedora Media Writer, balenaEtcher, and Rufus). These USBs booted-up just fine on my laptop, but none of them worked on my desktop. I don’t know what the hardware compatibility issue was, but I didn’t want to spend time figuring it out.

  • TUXEDO OS booted up properly, but it ran slowly and kept crashing – likely another, though different, compatibility issue with my desktop hardware.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed booted, but it didn’t recognise my screen’s resolution and the OS installer wouldn’t launch from within the live USB. This didn’t give me much confidence in its ability to run on my desktop’s hardware.

As for the rest:

  • Nitrux OS I eliminated because it is planning to drop KDE Plasma in the future. I never even ran its live USB version.

  • Like Fedora’s KDE “spin”, MX Linux’s KDE version also didn’t boot. But I was told it was easy enough to install its flagship Xfce version and then just switch to KDE afterwards, so I didn’t immediately eliminate this option.

  • Kubuntu booted up easily and worked flawlessly. But I knew that if I was going to use it, I’d have to rip out its guts and modify how it worked. And, honestly, I didn’t have the energy to do that. I’d wanted my OS installation and maintenance to be easy, remember? So while I mostly-eliminated this option, I did keep it as last-resort compromise if literally nothing else worked.

Desktop wallpaper graphic depicting a forest and mountain range in which the MX Linux logo has been incorporated into mountains shown in the background

Getting MX Linux to work

To recap, after my initial round of testing and elimination, MX Linux was the last distro standing and I was determined to make it work for me.

So I installed the Xfce desktop version of MX Linux and, lo and behold, it worked perfectly and installed without a hitch. I immediately installed the KDE desktop on top of this, and that installed just fine too. Success!

But then I restarted my computer and it wouldn’t boot, screeching to a halt at the same spot in the boot-up process where the MX Linux KDE live USB crashed. Great.

The irritating thing was that the MX Linux KDE distro worked beautifully on my ThinkPad laptop, and even on my older gaming laptop with an NVIDIA GPU, so I knew the issue was with my desktop’s relatively newer hardware.

It took a couple of hours, but I finally figured out the problem: my desktop’s hardware absolutely does not support SDDM, the Simple Desktop Display Manager that launches the log-in screen. MX Linux’s Xfce desktop environment worked perfect because it uses the LightDM display manager. When I’d installed KDE on top of MX Linux earlier, I’d been given the option to switch display managers to SDDM and, since SDDM is the recommended display manager for KDE, I had said yes. *sigh* [3]

So I reinstalled MX Linux with Xfce, reinstalled the KDE desktop, but this time did not switch away from LightDM. And everything worked!

That’s where I am now: running MX Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. Yes, the KDE Plasma that comes with MX Linux is the older 5.27 version (compared to its current 6.4 version) but everything runs beautifully and I’m loving my set-up!

MX Linux with a KDE Plasma desktop running on my computer with an ultra widescreen monitor (3840×166px).

Keeping MX Linux running

Has it been smooth sailing with MX Linux over the last few months? For the most part, yes! I haven’t wanted or needed to switch back to Windows 11 even once.

In fact, the Windows software I thought I’d miss the most works perfectly well on my set up via Wine (a Windows emulation layer that you can “install” Windows software in Linux).

The only issue I’ve had is with Linux software that relies on the systemd initialisation system to set things up. MX Linux doesn’t use systemd any more, though you can switch to its systemd version at boot time, if needed. But that’s okay, it was easy to find alternative software that didn’t rely on systemd.

It did, of course, take a while to get everything set up the way I like. But I took extensive notes and kept a detail log of every bit of software I installed and every configuration change I made, so I’ve been able to replicate this set-up on my laptop as well. Now my system is running exactly how I want it to on both computers.

To keep things fun, I did install openSUSE Tumbleweed on my older gaming laptop and I’m having fun playing around with that set-up – especially since that does have the latest version of KDE Plasma installed.

What next?

So what’s next in my desktop Linux journey? Not much on the OS side, actually. (Though I do want to keep playing around with openSUSE on my older laptop.)

All the work I need to do is on the software side, and that’s mainly finding Linux alternatives to Windows software and then using these alternatives till I’m as proficient as I was before I made the switch.

It did take me a while to figure out my new file storage, back-up, and cloud-sync strategy though, but I’ll talk about all that in future blog posts :)

For now I’m just going to enjoy doing things on my computer while the OS fades into the background without spying on me and tracking my every move. Woohoo!

[1] I wanted to use the same distro on my desktop and my laptop. I had Linux Mint installed on my laptop for the longest time, but Cinnamon’s poorly-implemented fractional scaling was really starting to grate on me me so I’d gone back to 100% scaling. (When I scaled my screen up to 125% or 150%, YouTube videos wouldn’t play properly and playing those videos would max-out CPU resources.) I really like Linux Mint and would use it everywhere if I could, and since it’s basically a version of Ubuntu without all of Canonical’s crap shoved into it, it works perfectly on all my hardware. The only thing that stops me from using Linux Mint is that it no longer supports KDE. It now comes with its own Cinnamon desktop, which is based on GNOME. Yes, you can install KDE on Linux Mint afterwards, but I’d much rather use a distro that supports KDE officially.

[2] In case you’re wondering, these were the most-recommended KDE distros that I eliminated straight away for various reasons: KDE Neon because it isn’t particularly stable, nor is it meant to be; KaOS because it’s a rolling release, which I’d rather not use; and CatchyOS, EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux, and Manjaro because they’re all based on Arch.

[3] Fedora uses the SDDM display manager, which is potentially why its live USB never even booted on my desktop. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Photo walk] Webb bridge

My office is in Docklands and, super conveniently, the place I get my car serviced is in the corner of South Melbourne that’s a short walk from there. I got my car serviced yesterday so I took these two photos while crossing the Webb Bridge.

(I’ve taken several photos of, on, and from this bridge in the past.)

Scooting up the Webb Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo of a man in a dark blue suit wearing a light blue cycling helmet, sunglasses, and brown formal shoes. The man has a black messenger bag slung across his back. The man is riding an electric scooter up a cycling and pedestrian bridge that spans an urban river.

Pushing a pram onto the Webb Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo of a man in a brown jacket, black pants, and white sneakers pushing a baby in a pram up the incline of a pedestrian and cycle bridge that spans an urban river.