When comparing DEC Terminal Modern vs Google Noto, the Slant community recommends DEC Terminal Modern for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” DEC Terminal Modern is ranked 78th while Google Noto is ranked 92nd. The most important reason people chose DEC Terminal Modern is:
I use 18-point DEC Terminal Modern for interacting with OpenVMS systems, with anti-aliasing and subpixel anti-aliasing. With a dark background and a soft white, amber, or green foreground, it's very reminiscent of the physical terminals, though I don't actually have one for comparison. Unless you want an ultra-retro "rasterized" appearance, I would recommend it by far over either "Glass TTY VT220" or "VT220-mod". A very slight "con" is that it doesn't work well with at least some of iTerm2's built-in Powerline glyphs. Spaces appear as filled blocks, for example.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great looking retro font.
I use 18-point DEC Terminal Modern for interacting with OpenVMS systems, with anti-aliasing and subpixel anti-aliasing. With a dark background and a soft white, amber, or green foreground, it's very reminiscent of the physical terminals, though I don't actually have one for comparison.
Unless you want an ultra-retro "rasterized" appearance, I would recommend it by far over either "Glass TTY VT220" or "VT220-mod".
A very slight "con" is that it doesn't work well with at least some of iTerm2's built-in Powerline glyphs. Spaces appear as filled blocks, for example.
Pro Interesting look
The look of DEC Terminal Modern is somewhat retro-inspired.
Pro Optimized for a large variety of displays
Glyph design on Noto Sans is well designed and accounts for HiDPI and standard displays.
Pro Open-source
Licensed and distributed under the SIL Open Font License.
Pro Retina-ready
Looks very clean and crisp on retina displays.
Pro Simple and yet beautiful
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.
Pro Expansive character set
Noto Sans is one of the most comprehensive fonts in the market, covering an estimated 30+ languages backed by Google.
Cons
Con Font pack might be too large
Because it is so comprehensive, the TTF/OTF packages in ZIP is really large.