Here’s the Deal

Liberation Mono vs M+ 1 Code

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When comparing Liberation Mono vs M+ 1 Code, the Slant community recommends M+ 1 Code for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” M+ 1 Code is ranked 8th while Liberation Mono is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose M+ 1 Code is:

This is a non-copyleft license that has minimal requirements regarding redistribution of the software.

Specs

LicenseOFL-1.1

LigaturesNo

Weights2 (Regular, Bold)

Zero StyleDot

Metric-compatibleMonotype Courier New

LicenseOFL-1.1

LigaturesNo

Weights7 (Thin, Extralight, Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold)

Zero StyleDot

AlternativeIntel One Mono, Mononoki

ItalicsNo

NotesWithout Kanji: M+ Code Latin 50 / Without Kanji, wider tracking: M+ Code Latin 60

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best programming fonts?

Pros

Pro
Very readable

Liberation Mono works well with hinting on high-resolution displays.

Pro
As of 2023: Second Best screen-modern drop-in replacement for MT Courier New

Metric-compatible with Monotype Courier New, dot 0 (zero), modern non-Kettler lowercase l (ell), 660+ glyphs, OFL-1.1 license

Pro
Compact line height

Just like Courier New (the metrics of which this font emulates), its line height isn't too big, which results in more lines on the screen, compared to Consolas and several other more popular fonts.

Pro
Has Bold typeface

Pro
Permissive free software licence

This is a non-copyleft license that has minimal requirements regarding redistribution of the software.

Pro
Narrow font is great for teaching

M+ 1m allows you to fit much more code on slides yet still have them be highly legible, making it a great choice for teaching.

Pro
17 different character-encodings available

ISO-8859-1, Latin-1 Western European
ISO-8859-2, Latin-2 Central European
ISO-8859-3, Latin-3 South European
ISO-8859-4, Latin-4 North European
ISO-8859-5, Latin/Cyrillic
ISO-8859-7, Latin/Greek
ISO-8859-8, Latin/Hebrew
ISO-8859-9, Latin-5 Turkish
ISO-8859-10, Latin-6 Nordic
ISO-8859-13, Latin-7 Baltic Rim
ISO-8859-14, Latin-8 Celtic
ISO-8859-15, Latin-9 A revision of 8859-1
ISO-8859-16, Latin-10 South-Eastern European
T1 Encoding, Default 8-bit encoding in many TeX installations
Windows-1252, Used by default in the legacy components of MS Windows
WGL4, Pan-European character set defined by Microsoft
VISCII, Vietnamese standard character set

Pro
Five weights from Thin to Bold

The five font weights available are thin, light, regular, medium, and bold.

Pro
Works well with Japanese

The widths are half that of the Japanese characters in the font.

Pro
High legibility

M+ M Type-1 (1M) was created to emphasize the balance of natural letterform and high legibility.

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Cons

Con
Difference between "0" and "O" isn't clear

It can be difficult to tell the difference between the number "0" and the letter "O". However, the Fedora Project has a slightly altered version of Liberation Mono that fixes this with a dotted zero.