When comparing Agave vs Liberation Mono, the Slant community recommends Liberation Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Liberation Mono is ranked 17th while Agave is ranked 56th. The most important reason people chose Liberation Mono is:
Liberation Mono works well with hinting on high-resolution displays.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Sleek font and it looks good on the terminal
Pro Good design
Very nice, not boring, and clear to read even in small font sizes.
Pro Unusual “illusion” effect happens in word movement at smaller sizes!
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
Cons
Con No italics
Con No ligature support
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.