[nitrogen]

You can get font smoothing from xterm by using the -fa option. Use xfontsel to build the parameter string. There are probably "xresource" (iirc) settings to change its color palette, or you can use a 256color scheme for your editor. It's not exactly easy, but it is very fast and lightweight.

[walterbell]

Linux has at least one nice GPL console font, courtesy of Sun Microsystems, https://github.com/talamus/solarize-12x29-psf