Hey Tom I don’t know if this problem is still relevant for you, but the thread is getting referenced elsewhere online so I thought I’d put a note here for future readers.

I run a publishing company and have used this font family for several large book projects now. Additionally it is a go-to font for me on smaller works, especially with mixed-language content.

Contrary to several of the comments above, the Libertine family isn’t a “cheap” font and it shouldn’t be discarded just because it’s free. It actually has a lot going for it that even many expensive commercial fonts don’t measure up to. That being said the Linux Libertine series also did have a number of bugs and at some point the original developer basically abandoned the project. After that for a number of years there were versions floating around that fixed one bug or another, but no comprehensive set of fixes — until more recently.

Since 2012 actually there has been a fork called Libertinus Serif (along with a fork of Biolinum called Libertinus Sans) that you can find at https://github.com/khaledhosny/libertinus. This project has turned into a fairly exhaustive set of fixes for the original font that has dealt with most of the issues reported on but never fixed on the original project’s tracker as well as expanded the character coverage and fixed any number of more recently reported issue. The math fonts have also been developed considerably.

I’ve found this series to be a great drop in replacement for anything that used Linux Libertine with a lot of the little odds and ends fixed. In my publishing work it’s proved relatively problem free. I highly recommend anybody using the original font series to switch over.

Lastly as the font is still actively developed, if there are problems with it they usually get addressed in short order after being reported. For example this issue was mentioned here is an issue https://github.com/khaledhosny/libertinus/issues/62, although it is not clear whether this issue is even relevant to that font. If you happen to try it please report how your previous problem is affected.

Caleb
Via Christus Publications