Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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?"

4 of 178 comments (clear)

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

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

  2. 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.

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
  3. Re:Mandrake 10.0 by boredMDer · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    Gentoo is not a Debian based distro.

  4. 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.