Better looking fonts in Linux

Tinuva

Tinuva

The Magician
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Now I know sometimes it come up that people don't like the way fonts look like in Linux. Generally fonts looked alright for me in Ubuntu and Fedora, but when I set up my own build the way I like it on Archlinux, I realized just how bad fonts can look in Linux. I was almost on a journey of epic proportions to go and fine tune all the settings manually font by font myself, when I found the Infinality patches for freetype2 and fontconfig packages. Literally saved my hours and hours.

These patches and pre-set templates for settings made a major difference for me, fonts actually look not good, but great on Linux now. This includes all of Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird (except the composer still suck), terminals, pretty much all applications, in my openbox/tint2 environment.

Thought it may help out someone else also looking to make their fonts look better on any distribution.

Link: http://www.infinality.net/
Link for downloads for most distributions: http://www.infinality.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=133

ps. For those that want to know, I have the following font packages installed:
extra/ttf-dejavu 2.33-4 [installed]
extra/ttf-linux-libertine 5.3.0-2 [installed]
community/ttf-liberation 2.00.1-3 [installed]
aur/ttf-google-fonts-hg 3363.4fac466cc570-1 [out of date] [installed]
aur/ttf-microsoft-tahoma 5.26-1 [out of date] [installed]
aur/ttf-office-2007-fonts 1.0-2 [out of date] [installed]
aur/ttf-win7-fonts-autodownload 7.1-1 [out of date] [installed]
extra/gsfonts 1.0.7pre44-3 [installed]
 
Do you get the following error?

Code: 
Fontconfig error: "/home/username/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf", line 44: invalid attribute 'name'

It is nothing system critical, but OCDness wants everything right as rain.
:(

Even if I remove the config file completely I still get this error. Since it is not system critical I cannot find anyone who found a solution to this.
 
Don't think I have ever gotten that. What distro is that on @MyWorld ?

On Archlinux we have the following file: /etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf
This file will try and load config files from :
$HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d
$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

So whichever distro you have, would probably have something similar. In Arch's case, the 50-user.conf is a symlink which you can safely remove, and re-add if you want to make use of it later.
 
Arch.
Try running any app from terminal and see if you get the same error. It should be the first or second line.
 
Nope I don't get it. You will find it is configured somewhere in /etc/fonts/ though. Does it actually show "/home/username/.config/" as part of the line? Looks like a configuration mistake somewhere in /etc/fonts/ to me.

Try:
grep -lir "username" /etc/fonts/
 
Nope, just added username to replace my own.
$HOME/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

EDIT:
Ah, just remove the config file entirely again and now the error is gone. Must have been an update over the last couple of days since I did remove the file in the past with no effect on the error.

OCD can now again be put to rest.
 
I've tried those patches before (on Arch) and I did not like the results. font config is pretty subjective if you ask me, I use the ubuntu fonts but without the ubuntu patches they did to the rendering and I really like them. For me OS X has the worst fonts on the planet and they are not very configurable either, you need a 3rd party app to do that.
 
Maverick Jester said:
Noob question, but are these merely font packages?
Click to expand...
fonconfig-infinality and freetyp2-infinality is not fonts, its the font rendering engine. So it will replace that on your system. The fonts themselves, is still your own choice of which ones you would like to use. So what is replaced, is the font rendering packages, with the same software which have some patches applied to them, and some preset config files, which you can still customize if you want to like you would without these packages.

ponder said:
I've tried those patches before (on Arch) and I did not like the results. font config is pretty subjective if you ask me, I use the ubuntu fonts but without the ubuntu patches they did to the rendering and I really like them. For me OS X has the worst fonts on the planet and they are not very configurable either, you need a 3rd party app to do that.
Click to expand...
I agree, how fonts are rendered is very subject, and I for one like these and thought some others might too. If however you try it, and don't like it, for sure don't use it, the great thing about Arch is, you can easily change back.

I had the ubuntu font pack on, but it conflicts with the google font pack, which I prefer to have.
 
Tinuva said:
fonconfig-infinality and freetyp2-infinality is not fonts, its the font rendering engine. So it will replace that on your system. The fonts themselves, is still your own choice of which ones you would like to use. So what is replaced, is the font rendering packages, with the same software which have some patches applied to them, and some preset config files, which you can still customize if you want to like you would without these packages.
Click to expand...

So something akin to ClearType font rendering?
 
The infinality-bundle is a good alternative, though I prefer the AUR route. That said, the bundle has it's use cases. Both will give the same beautiful font looks, which is great.
 
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