Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by GuB-42 983 days ago
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.
1 comments
worksonmine 983 days ago
> 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?

link