I have had the best font experience on arch, out of gentoo, debian, Ubuntu, fedora, centos, and FreeBSD. It wasn't straight out of the box, but it was easier to make happen than on any of the others.
That means you belong to the 1st group, i.e. people who prefer pixelated/rough text look from the 90s. No offense, but this "looks fine to me" attitude is what has been historically handicapping the Linux desktop.
Below are two examples of "looks fine":
Case #1. Thin non-antialiased fonts sirca Windows 95:
Notice the excellent typeface they developed themselves, consistent and high-quality anti-aliasing, etc. This looks gorgeous on a modern high-DPI screen. Group #1 thinks this "looks blurry" and Arch works fine for them.
Simply put, It is technically impossible for Arch to provide you with the best font experience because their freetype is compiled with, hm... parts of code removed. The parts that are responsible for hinting, bytecode interpretation and subpixel rendering. And the way they ship Open Office and Firefox (well, last time I checked) makes their fonts non-configurable at all, since they ignore system/global version of freetype.
I have probably worked more for my fonts than for anything else about my system, on any linux distro I've tried (on OSX, the rendering's fine but the actual font choices kind of blow...there I have other problems that consume much more of my time than the fonts).
On arch, I install the infinality patched freetype stuff from the AUR, set some preferences in .Xresources, install the fonts I like, and I'm good to go. On any other distro, installing patched freetype and overriding the distro-maintained font configuration invariably leads down the path of madness. I don't run the software you mention, but I have never seen an incompatibility issue.
You mention ubuntu. Honestly, its defaults are fine. That is, as long as you never try to use a different font, or install software that ignores the default, or try to use an alternative program like rxvt-unicode instead of gnome-terminal, or visit a web page that specifies its own font, or have a lowish dpi screen. Ubuntu's great if you stay inside the garden. I just barely don't, but it's enough to piss me off.
Also, I happen to not use openoffice or firefox, so I haven't run into the problems you describe. But I expect that they would look great on my system, because the only version of freetype I have installed has patches that do what I like.
EDIT: here's my screenshot with a 'd' and a 'p'. looks fine to me: http://imgur.com/UZJ17
> I install the infinality patched freetype stuff from the AUR
I proved my point right there. That's what I've been doing too and maintaining AUR-sourced patched core packages like that has been problematic: every once in a while you'll get a part of Gnome or something else demanding a higher version of freetype (which your patched version doesn't provide) and it either halts your update or forces you to get plain vanilla freetype.
And you haven't addressed the case of packages that don't use system cairo/freetype. BTW the rendering on your screenshot is excellent. Also I feel that this discussion is somewhat misplaced. :)
Arch linux by default does not even have X installed by default. So while I install X, gnome, and nvidia drivers, the installation of the fonts of choice is the least of my concerns.
P.S. I am not bashing arch linux, I am just pointing out that the default Arch linux does not even have a ui and you can not compare this to Ubuntu.
Hm, interesting. I think all those examples look terrible. First thing I do on a new ubuntu install is this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208396
The result looks exactly as it does on my Windows 7 install (cleartype disabled, it makes my eyes bleed).
Below are two examples of "looks fine":
Case #1. Thin non-antialiased fonts sirca Windows 95:
http://i1-linux.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Arch-Linux_...
Case #2. Default Arch anti-aliasing with poor quality:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JZ2dKqaJUYw/TqCuVyI3WDI/AAAAAAAAAj...
Just look at "archlinux" rendering in the URL.
And this is how Ubuntu looks by default:
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f111/334...
Notice the excellent typeface they developed themselves, consistent and high-quality anti-aliasing, etc. This looks gorgeous on a modern high-DPI screen. Group #1 thinks this "looks blurry" and Arch works fine for them.
Simply put, It is technically impossible for Arch to provide you with the best font experience because their freetype is compiled with, hm... parts of code removed. The parts that are responsible for hinting, bytecode interpretation and subpixel rendering. And the way they ship Open Office and Firefox (well, last time I checked) makes their fonts non-configurable at all, since they ignore system/global version of freetype.