So what I see there is that badly designed fonts require ligatures to correct interactions.

Like, I get that there are some neat ones, e.g. I have them turned on when writing code for symbols, but they seem wholly unnecessary and distracting in alphabetical characters.

But I’m also the kind of weirdo that thinks the world needs more monospace fonts.

/shrug

To me, that’s even worse. Ligatures that have 0 separation where it’s expected short circuit my reading comprehension.

The “fi” combination also seems problematic since they seem to intersect.

My 14+ year old laser printer “just works” on the latest linux kernel. It has been several years since MacOS supported installing the last driver binary created for it.