Is it just me or fonts really look better on GNOME and other (gtk DEs)? With the same font smoothing/anti-aliasing settings, text in GNOME is smoother and more similar to MacOS fonts.
A good example is Cantrell font. It looks way better in GNOME than in KDE.
I was gonna call antialiasing and smoothing settings, but
Where did you set those? Do other fonts like Noto / Liberation also look different on Gnome? Is it a difference between GTK vs Qt rather than which DE it runs on?
I don’t have Gnome so I can’t compare directly, but on KDE fonts look identical between GTK and Qt applications, and the compositor isn’t involved with font rendering. Which leads me to, some settings have to be different on Gnome vs KDE.
I set those using the Sustem Settings (KDE) and Tweaks (GNOME). To me all fonts look a bit different between Gnome and KDE.
Choose a font and size, then do screenshots of the same word on kde and gnome. Then open gimp, put each screenshot in a layer, align them and make it show the difference. Then you objectively know if and how they’re different
Can you share the exact settings and screenshots to compare?
Are you using gnome x11 or gnome wayland and plasma x11 or plasma wayland?
The settings are not an exact match between desktops, even though they are named the same. The backend library, Freetype, that renders fonts is the same, however.