I've tried this several times, and I get the same result. After a fresh install of Etch, Firefox has ragged nasty fonts. On a machine that I upgraded from Sarge the fonts are just fine. If someone has a solution I'd love to hear it. I simply do not understand fonts. My next thing to try, I guess is to check the font directories between the two machines to see what's different. Surely someone knows what's happening?

I don't know specifically what's happening, but following the instructions in Section 3 of this howto has always fixed whatever font problems I had.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Font-HOWTO/index.html

Another thing: There seem to be some problems in the current Etch installer related to Xorg. I always run "# aptitude install xorg" one final time after the installation is complete.

The problem is that I simply cannot figure out what the difference is between the two machines. I have spent a lot of "quality" time with the synaptic package manager with no joy. The only way I can get them to have the same firefox fonts is if I clone the root drive. The FF configuration panel does not give me the same end result. It's driving me mad.

get the msttcorefonts from apt-get. I think thats what i did to fix it on mine.

"get the msttcorefonts from apt-get. I think thats what i did to fix it on mine."

Well, I can't say that it doesn't look better. But, that's after turning off the ability for the pages to load their own fonts (which I had tried before msttcorefonts). I dunno. I never thought fonts mattered at all, until my eyes got old.

I might have had to restart it or something... I can't really remember, but I'm pretty sure those are the only new fonts I installed and I'm fairly sure the problem is with the default font.

It's a funny thing, my problem turned out to be some kind of borked up FF config of the monospace font. Now that I touched it on the machine I liked, it's gone there, as well, probably never to return. I literally looked at every font available to me, and it ain't none of them. I don't know what happened, but at least your pointer motivated me to start banging on it with a big enough hammer to get some understanding and control of the situation. Thanks!

so did you get it working then?

I'd hafta say that is my favorite thing about linux. Any time you have a problem you learn something new about how the whole thing works. Gives you a sense of accomplishment I suppose.

"so did you get it working then?"

Yeah, well enough, I guess. I was a bit concerned about not being able to figure out exactly what had happened. But, since it's just a font issue, I'm not going to let it worry me too much.

I have had trouble with fonts in Linux in the past "mostly blurry fonts" , i have played around with them for many months until i stumbled across the settings i use now.

Here is my little recipe i use .

First i install msttcorefonts , gsfonts , gsfonts-other and gsfonts-x11.

Then i setup my fonts as follows

http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?i...referenpo2.png

and

http://img131.imageshack.us/my.php?i...enderinhi4.png


then in Firefox i set them up like this

http://img405.imageshack.us/my.php?i...oxprefezi0.png

and this

http://img131.imageshack.us/my.php?i...t4fontsna4.png

This fixed my font problem as well as my sore eye's , as you can see from the screen shots the fonts are crystal clear and easy on the eye's.

cheers

edit: updated screenshots to current install of etch .

"Here is my little recipe i use ."

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

Hvae you tried reconfiguring your fonts?

As root

dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Then it gives you three screens with different settigns you can enable and dissable. Play around with this. I cannot remember what settings I changed to get my fonts to look smooth, but play around anabled and disabling until you find a settings thats right.

I was having a similar problem when using kde and this did the trick.

Hey, oldlucky, your recipe worked wonders for me. I was having the 'ragged fonts in Firefox' problem too. Thanks a ton.

Glad it helped , i had a hell of a time getting fonts to display to my liking and most

importantly my eyes , i used to get bad eye strain trying to read blurry fonts in Firefox.

I also use the DVI output of my Nvidia 6200 card instead of the vga port this alone has made a huge

difference to my viewing pleasure.

cheers

The bitmap fonts seem to cause fonts to look very jagged in firefox, even after installing microsoft fonts. The solution is to run the following command as root and turn off bitmap fonts when you're given the option:

dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config