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BinaryTides published a tutorial about getting better looking fonts in Ubuntu Linux



Fonts on linux have long been an issue due to various reasons like the BCI patent by Apple, lack of free quality fonts etc. However over time things have changed and now its possible to get your linux system fonts look as good as, or even better than a mac or windows 8 as far as fonts are concerned. In this post I am going to show you couple of simple tricks that can make the fonts of your linux system look amazing!!

However first there are a couple of things to know about how the tricks work. We are mainly going to do 2 things. First is, get better fonts for the system. Second, we are going to tweak the ".fonts.conf" file in the home directory. The ".fonts.conf" file allows a user to override the system font settings like antialiasing, hinting, auto-hinting, sub pixel rendering etc.

The tweaks shown in the post should give identical font rendering on any linux distro provided that BCI hinting (Byte code interpreter) is available (which it is on most modern linux distros since the bci patent has now expired).
  How to get gorgeous looking fonts on ubuntu linux