4 ms·

Dear lord, the fonts (and font rendering) on Linux (both KDE and Gnome) are just horrendous. How do people put up with this crap?

by mikevm 14y ago

keithpeter 14y ago
Ubuntu have a patched library and sensible defaults that gives their distributions a better out of box (off DVD?)experience. I wish others would pay attention to this kind of detail. I've found that with nvidia graphics cards I need to use the proprietary drivers; nouveau is not quite there yet with fonts in my experience. I'd be delighted if someone has a font-config fix for that as nouveau is pretty nice these days. KDE hides the hinting/subpixel antialiassing settings in Application Appearance / Fonts from memory.
andrewcooke 14y ago
they are? i thought when they were configured correctly they were considered similar in quality, but different in approach to osx (there is a long article somewhere discussing this, but i cannot find it now i need to reference it, sorry). [edit http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-respecting-the-pixel-grid.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-resp... isn't what i remember, but since opensuse uses MS fonts (see below) covers the basic issue] in opensuse you typically have to install the fetchmsttfonts package.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/opensuse-fonts-nvidia-drivers-ms-fonts.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/opensuse-fonts-nvidia-driver... Above with an Opensuse 12.3 installation updated from RC2 to the release, with nvidia proprietary drivers installed (GO2 version, GT520 card) and ms web core fonts installed (fetchmsttfonts). Screen resolution is the default 96 dpi. Looks not far south of Ubuntu to me. How bad does it look to you?
tehwalrus 14y ago
when I set up my debian VM on a new laptop recently, it took me a few days to (be bothered to) figure out how to fix font rendering in XFCE. Once I did, I could use the same fonts and font sizes as in OS X with comparable (although slightly different) final effect.
TallGuyShort 14y ago
In terms of desktop environments, I've only used Ubuntu and Fedora recently, but I've found their font rendering to be sufficiently pleasant. Either way, the lower-level features of the OS are much more important to me, as is probably the case with most Linux users.
jfebrer 14y ago
As a Debian user that was something that I wasn't satisfied, and which Ubuntu did much better than anyone else, finally I found this link and I could match Ubuntu font rendering. http://bit.ly/reTb4m http://bit.ly/reTb4m For me the real trick was: echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" > ~/.Xresources
- mikevm 14y ago
  I'm using Kubuntu, do I need to install the "freetype-freeworld" package?
  - jfebrer 14y ago
    No, you just need to execute this on a terminal: echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" > ~/.Xresources And check the output of: xrdb -query | grep Xft
- abrowne 14y ago
  Full URL: http://blog.andreas-haerter.com/2011/07/18/tune-improve-fedora-fonts-typeface-ubuntu-like-sharp-fonts http://blog.andreas-haerter.com/2011/07/18/tune-improve-fedo...
derleth 14y ago
And I wonder how people can put up with the perpetually blurry and over-bold Mac font rendering, not to mention the fonts themselves.

Dear lord, the fonts (and font rendering) on Linux (both KDE and Gnome) are just horrendous. How do people put up with this crap?

by mikevm 14y ago

Dear lord, the fonts (and font rendering) on Linux (both KDE and Gnome) are just horrendous. How do people put up with this crap?

keithpeter 14y ago

Ubuntu have a patched library and sensible defaults that gives their distributions a better out of box (off DVD?)experience. I wish others would pay attention to this kind of detail. I've found that with nvidia graphics cards I need to use the proprietary drivers; nouveau is not quite there yet with fonts in my experience. I'd be delighted if someone has a font-config fix for that as nouveau is pretty nice these days. KDE hides the hinting/subpixel antialiassing settings in Application Appearance / Fonts from memory.

andrewcooke 14y ago

they are? i thought when they were configured correctly they were considered similar in quality, but different in approach to osx (there is a long article somewhere discussing this, but i cannot find it now i need to reference it, sorry). [edit http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-respecting-the-pixel-grid.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-resp... isn't what i remember, but since opensuse uses MS fonts (see below) covers the basic issue] in opensuse you typically have to install the fetchmsttfonts package.

keithpeter 14y ago
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/opensuse-fonts-nvidia-drivers-ms-fonts.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/opensuse-fonts-nvidia-driver... Above with an Opensuse 12.3 installation updated from RC2 to the release, with nvidia proprietary drivers installed (GO2 version, GT520 card) and ms web core fonts installed (fetchmsttfonts). Screen resolution is the default 96 dpi. Looks not far south of Ubuntu to me. How bad does it look to you?

tehwalrus 14y ago

when I set up my debian VM on a new laptop recently, it took me a few days to (be bothered to) figure out how to fix font rendering in XFCE. Once I did, I could use the same fonts and font sizes as in OS X with comparable (although slightly different) final effect.

TallGuyShort 14y ago

In terms of desktop environments, I've only used Ubuntu and Fedora recently, but I've found their font rendering to be sufficiently pleasant. Either way, the lower-level features of the OS are much more important to me, as is probably the case with most Linux users.

jfebrer 14y ago

As a Debian user that was something that I wasn't satisfied, and which Ubuntu did much better than anyone else, finally I found this link and I could match Ubuntu font rendering. http://bit.ly/reTb4m http://bit.ly/reTb4m For me the real trick was: echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" > ~/.Xresources

mikevm 14y ago
I'm using Kubuntu, do I need to install the "freetype-freeworld" package?
- jfebrer 14y ago
  No, you just need to execute this on a terminal: echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" > ~/.Xresources And check the output of: xrdb -query | grep Xft
abrowne 14y ago
Full URL: http://blog.andreas-haerter.com/2011/07/18/tune-improve-fedora-fonts-typeface-ubuntu-like-sharp-fonts http://blog.andreas-haerter.com/2011/07/18/tune-improve-fedo...

derleth 14y ago

And I wonder how people can put up with the perpetually blurry and over-bold Mac font rendering, not to mention the fonts themselves.