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Comment by rms | Hacker News Reader

downmodded for being slightly profane? Linux font rendering really does blow.

Downmodded for lack of supporting arguments.

Looks fine out of the box on every install I've seen of the current most popular distribution (Ubuntu 7.04).

Also has worked fine on every distro I've used since at least 2000 (though back then I used Fedora, which at the time was a little ahead of the pack).

Vista, incidentally, requires a reboot to increase the font DPI. Try it.

Yes, it looks fine if you have font smoothing on, but try turning it off. The underlying font rendering is really poor, the underlying font rendering for Windows makes everything look like a pixel font.

Sure, monochrome fonts look bad.

Since font are rendered with smoothing by default, rather than the monochrome option, it's not really a supporting argument.

At less than obscene resolutions, I greatly prefer monochrome fonts over smoothed fonts, which look blurry to me. Whenever I'm running at 200DPI, I'll switch to subpixel anti-aliased fonts.

Windows gives me the option of having incredibly readable subtly smoothed monochrome fonts and Linux only lets me have smoothed fonts. This is one area (the only area, I admit) where Linux is less configurable, or at least has less worthwhile options than Windows. But text readability seems like the single most important issue to me in an OS, so I have to stick with Windows until I find a Linux kernel recompiled for better monochrome fonts.

Or I need to download a pixel font for all the standard web and system fonts, but copyright makes that illegal and impossible.

How the heck did you get your hands on a 200DPI display? The highest I've ever seen is 132DPI.

(It was an arbitrarily high number for rhetorical purposes. I probably should have made it smaller. I was trying to imply that I will switch to subpixel smoothed fonts at some later date.)

edit: here's one from 2003 that sold for $8,400. http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/03/28/ibm-t...

You could just learn to compile a kernel. Not that tough, really -- and a valuable skill if you want to know about Xen and other things.

OK, I found some good instructions that require only a recompile of freetype -- apparently the reason Linux renders fonts so poorly is that Apple has the good algorithms patented, so they can't turn on the good font rendering by default.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=694...

I might have to reinstall Linux this weekend, if it works I'll write a blog post with lots of pictures.

This guide has pictures of a Linux install with properly non-smoothed fonts. http://avi.alkalay.net/linux/docs/font-howto/Font.html

He doesn't need to compile a kernel for that, just Freetype.

Slightly off topic, most people who compile a kernel don't need to - they usually need to add a module, which if it isn't already packaged, is easily compilable on its own. Check RHEL 4's release notes (which show how to create a Makefile for a single module).

The compile love of Linux novices comes from old documentation from before kernel 2.0, when most drivers started being available as modules.

Good point, thanks for bringing that up.

Nailer, I was just expressing one point of opinion. I cannot support the fact that something looks bad.Its an opinion. Both me and my friend are looking at the same monitor (ubuntu fiesty) and he thinks "its just fine" and I think the fonts blow. It probably has to do with my extreme and acute sensitivity for colors and shapes. My screen resolution is 1920 by 1300.Anything less and I become irritable. Notice my news.yc id?

I love Linux, but the fonts blow(till fiesty standard installation). I have to check out Gutsy yet.

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