Updated - 13 Mar 2026

This doesn't seem to be needed any longer. I'm not sure if Firefox updated font rendering on Linux or what happened, but it just looks better now without it.

Firefox has a font rendering quirk, where smaller fonts tend to not render very well. This is most evident on sites like Reddit, for me anyway. Luckily there is a fix. Open about:config and add/modify these settings:

gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.gamma 1500

gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.pixel_structure 5

gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode 5

Back to Firefox (for now)

I've used Zen Browser for a while (since the first public alpha), but it hasn't been smooth sailing lately, mostly due to some weird bookmark bar bugs. I feel like originally it was just a better looking Firefox, but lately it seems to be going a direction that adds a lot of functionality that I don't really use or need. It's nice, and even exciting, to have new features, but not so much if I'm having to work around them more than use them. I decided recently to just go back to Firefox, but I still find myself opening Zen from habit. This particular font issue has always bothered me in Firefox, so I did some research and found the settings about. It does look as well as Zen, but it's definitely an improvement over Firefox's default.