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Linux Desktop Distros with Quality Fonts?

Posted by timothy on from the out-of-box-experience dept.

occamboy writes "I'm trying to make a case for switching to Linux desktops, and would like to demonstrate how advantageous Linux is. While the advantages of Linux are more obvious for us techies, I'm finding that many non-technical types are immediately negatively biased by the look of Linux desktops. The problem boils down to screen fonts. It seems that, in the distributions that I've demonstrated, the screen fonts are either all aliased, or are aliased in some places and antialiased in others, which I've been told resembles a ransom note with letters cut from different magazines. I can understand where these critics are coming from; after all, they are staring at fonts on a monitor all day long. Are there any distributions that I can demonstrate which provide smooth and consistent screen fonts without requiring a lot of messing around?"

9 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, and use good fonts by leonbrooks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Probably preaching to the choir on this one, but if you only use crappy fonts, you will not ever get good results.

    There are plenty of good, free TTFs kicking around, starting with the Microsoft ones (yes Rheba, before they realised that competitors could use them too, the Evil Empire released some of the good things they make, for free. It's difficult to make insecure fonts, but I'm sure they tried :-).

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    1. Re:Oh, and use good fonts by Trepalium · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft didn't make most of those fonts, but rather just licensed them from Monotype and B&H. Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Wingdings are the only ones that MS created (presumably). Arial, Times New Roman, and the other very well known ones are Monotype fonts.

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  2. Munjoy Linux by degreesK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Good looking fonts is one of the goals of Munjoy Linux.

    1. Re:Munjoy Linux by reallocate · · Score: 3, Informative

      Munjoy looks good because it defaults to the equally good fonts produced by its creator, who also also tweaked KDE's Asteroid theme to good purpose. Toss in dbus, udev and a few other goodies and it is an excellent Debian-unstable derivative.

      As for apt, it handles a dist-upgrade with no problems. Although it is KDE centric, I've installed and used Gnome with no problems appearing.

      The current release can't handle Nvidia's proprietary driver. So, if 3D is a big deal for you, wait for the next release. (FWIW, installing dbus on a stock Debian unstable machine seems to keep X from finding the Nvidia driver.)

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  3. How to by Apreche · · Score: 5, Informative

    Set your fonts in X. Use freetype. You have to set fonts in many many places. GTK theme. Qt theme. Xdefaults. Application specific font settings. You have to go through all these places to set the font. Some distros like Fedora Core 2 and the newer Mandrakes I know use a similar font consistently by default in all these places. But if you want consistent fonting your only real option is to go through all these places and change the fonts. It's just a fact of life. If you want the power to have different fonts in different places you have to go to all these places to change the font if you want it to be the same in all places.

    I reccoment Bitstream Vera Sans. It is very nice and simple.

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  4. 95 distros - only one good font by ArmorFiend · · Score: 3, Informative

    Its funny, but there's really only one quality AA font for Linux right now: Bitstream Vera. Sure you can buy others, or loot them from your windows partition, but regardless of your disto the only good free one is Bitstream Vera.

    Don't leave home without it.

  5. Re:Mandrake 10.0 by boredMDer · · Score: 4, Informative

    ' some of the Debian-based distros (Gentoo, Knoppix)'

    Gentoo is not a Debian based distro.

  6. Mandrake + PLF + MSFonts by Danious · · Score: 3, Informative

    Grab Mandrake 10, upgrade to the PLF version of freetype2 (extra patented goodness turned on), install the MSFonts and run KDE.

    Done.

    Oh, and use a CRT for demo's: LCD + NVidia + XFree can take a bit of tweaking to get right.

    John.

  7. Why fonts look bad in free distros: HINTING by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's because of patents.

    TrueType font hinting is patented by Apple. To legally use TrueType hinting, you must pay royalties to Apple. This is why fonts look crappy in the free distros. (And no, antialiasing is not a substitute for proper hinting.)

    However, I don't know which (if any) pay-ware Linux distros have TrueType font hinting enabled.