[worksonmine]

I see so many complaints about font rendering on Linux but I don't really understand the issue and what you're experiencing. I use a window manager, no desktop environment and zero configuration for fonts other than what comes with the distributions minimal/server release.

Have I just been using Linux so long that I'm ignorant of what's possible on other systems? What am I missing?

[GuB-42]

https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...

There is a section on font rendering, here is a copy.

  Font rendering (which is implemented via high level GUI libraries) issues:
  
      ! ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly.
      Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings.
      Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs. This issue is impossible to solve unless there's a common GUI library/API which is shared between all tooklits and desktop environments.
      !! The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry.

Edit following worksonmine response:

I pasted the part related to font rendering here for convenience, but note that the article is much more complete and has a page-long preface explaining the context, and answers to the most common objections. The article is not a suggestion that you should use Windows instead, in fact the author also has a "Windows 10 sucks" article.

[worksonmine]

> ClearType fonts are not properly supported out of the box. Even though the ClearType font rendering technology is now supported, you have no means of properly tuning it thus ClearType fonts from Windows look ugly.

How is Windows font not rendering properly in Linux a Linux problem? Do we blame Windows for not supporting Linux specific software? Even so it seems to be possible to enable.

> Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings.

Highly opinionated, just change it, and the source is a slashdot comment from 2012? Really?

> Font antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DEs

Okay, use one that supports it if that's the problem.

> The way Wayland works, fonts under Wayland sessions may look blurry.

Haven't made the switch yet, so can't say much about it.

All of these are very weird gripes and I'm even more confused that people don't use Linux because "fonts". Are these really the problems that make people stay on spyware OS?

[seszett]

I very rarely notice it, but this very article to me is displayed in Bitstream Charter (I think because it contains one character somewhere that isn't present in Georgia) and Bitstream Charter is awfully bad for some reason, probably because I have it in PCF format.

My package manager describes it as A serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for low resolution devices.

You are probably blessed with not having this font installed on your system, which prevents your browser from choosing it instead of Georgia.

I rarely encounter this problem though, I suppose there aren't many fonts that are only available as bitmap on most systems, and even fewer of them get used by websites.