6x13 fixed vs Google Noto

6x13 fixed is the apex of bitmap fonts. It has a nice, defined character set and great proportions for quantity of text onscreen, making for excellent readability. It is aesthetically pleasing for a bitmap font and has been deservedly termed 'classic'.

At a small text size, each character has a limited resolution. A character size of 6x13 pixels means only 78 pixels per character. Modern fonts are designed to be scalable and are less legible at these small sizes. Using bitmap fonts increases legibility by eliminating scaling and sub-pixel aliasing artifacts. Some scalable fonts include "ppems" embedded bitmaps for this reason.

6x13 is the classic fixed monospace bitmap font that is expected to be available on every X server. It is part of the misc-fixed family. These fonts were handcrafted for readability in a terminal.

It is distributed alongside the X Window System.

Glyph design on Noto Sans is well designed and accounts for HiDPI and standard displays.

Licensed and distributed under the SIL Open Font License.

Looks very clean and crisp on retina displays.

Simple and beautiful - much like the Windows counterparts such as Calibri and Arial but it's native for Linux and for this reason it looks better than these two with anti-aliasing.

Noto Sans is one of the most comprehensive fonts in the market, covering an estimated 30+ languages backed by Google.