Nice Open Source Fonts
February 11th, 2008 | Ubuntu, Linux by thFonts have long been weak spot with Linux. However, nowadays there are many nice open source fonts available, and font rendering is pretty much on par with commercial operating systems. Most distributions do not ship with the best anti-aliasing options enabled due “software patents”. These patents apply only in United States. Rest of the world does not need to suffer due American patent madness so here is quick fix how to enable proper font rendering in Ubuntu: sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config and select Native rendering from the next screen.
Open Font preferences from: System > Preferences > Appearance and select Fonts tab. Tune your rendering preferences, set Smoothing to Subpixel (LCDs), Hinting to Slight and Subpixel Order to RGB.
The end result is a beautiful desktop (Click for fullscreen):
The font in the screenshot is MgOpen Cosmetica which can be installed with command sudo apt-get install ttf-mgopen and other fonts shown in the preview window are Bitstream fonts, which are installed in Ubuntu by default.
