These fonts are metrically compatible with the most popular fonts on the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software package (Monotype Corporation's Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman and Courier New, respectively), for which Liberation is intended as a free substitute.

All three fonts supported IBM/Microsoft code pages 437, 737, 775, 850, 852, 855, 857, 858, 860, 861, 863, 865, 866, 869, 1250, 1251, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1257, the Macintosh Character Set (US Roman), and the Windows OEM character set,[citation needed] that is, the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, leaving out many writing systems.

The first release of May 2007 was a set of fully usable fonts, but they lacked the full hinting capability.

In April 2010, Oracle Corporation contributed the Liberation Sans Narrow typefaces to the project.

The open source software LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org and Collabora Online included Liberation fonts in their installation packages for all supported operating systems.

Unlike modern versions of Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New, Liberation fonts do not support OpenType advanced typography features like ligatures, old style numerals, or fractions.