Two column mode does not give columns of exactly the same height

Question

Sometimes latex does not care that two columns be of exactly the same height. Here is an example, where on the first page the left column is about a millimeter longer than the right one:
documentclass[twocolumn,a4paper,12pt]{article}
usepackage[margin=3.0cm]{geometry}
usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
usepackage{librebaskerville}
usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
setlength{parindent}{2em}
setlength{parskip}{0.5em}
renewcommand{baselinestretch}{1.1}
usepackage{lipsum}

begin{document}
lipsum[1-6]
end{document}

Is the problem caused by the fixed paragraph space lengths? If yes, how to reduce/enlarge them but still have the vertical stretching working?

David Carlisle · Answer

LaTeX uses flushbottom by default in twocolum, so that any stretchabke vertical space is stretched so that the baselines of the last row in each column  line up.
In your example though you have removed all stretchable space, setting parskip to a fixed 6pt, and having no section headings or display math on the page means that  there is no space that can be stretched. as parskip is not a multiple of baselineskip the columns are necessarily of different lengths as they have different numbers of paragraph breaks.
You could use
setlength{parskip}{baselineskip}

if you want all lines to line up:

Although that still has no stretchable space to account for any items that are of different heights.
Or use a flexible parskip such as
setlength{parskip}{6pt plus 2pt}

Two column mode does not give columns of exactly the same height

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