I see, I never used win2k so didn't know that.

Reddazz, those screen shots display a much higher quality in terms of fonts than on my system. The whole desktop looks better than mine, in fact. The icons are nice and the whole thing generally looks great. I'd post a shot of my desktop now, but I'm using Windows as I can't stand using Linux for too long (because of the font problems). Here's what I've done display-wise so far:
I changed the d.p.i. to 96, I now have all the Windows fonts installed into a directory within Linux, and K.D.E. is set to use Times New Roman as the font of choice. I've played around with the anti-aliasing. It makes the Times New Roman font worse, so it's turned off. Perhaps if you tell me what your font is, the size you use, and any anti-aliasing settings you have, I might be able to get my fonts to appear clearly. At the moment it is a far cry from your screen shots!

I am using Verdana as my default font and the settings are default KDE settings. Have you tried fonts other than times new roman?

Keep in mind that Times New Roman's default size is smaller than a lot of seriffed fonts. What looks great with say, Georgia, at 14pt, looks tiny with TNR at the same point size.

I have a page illustrating some font differences here. Keep in mind that if you don't have the fonts installed, it'll appear as your browser's sans-serif default.

I hope you get the font situation sorted out. I'm still not sure why you had to download xfsfs for. I thought it was bundled and automagically loaded with most modern distros.

not sure what your font problem is - but the above message indicates you need to install gcc. it will be on your install disks, or easily found with a search online.

as for font rendering in general - this thread has some great examples of what Linux/BSD can do with fonts - as you can see, it may take some configuring, but the results are far superior:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...&pagenumber=87

Screen capture
That's the Verdana font. Anti-aliasing doesn't make any difference at all to its appearance. I've tried all sorts of fonts, but nothing works. Windows is still displaying fonts more clearly than Linux. All I want is for Linux to display in the same way as Windows, with the same clarity.

That looks alright to me. It would look even better if you increased the font font size slightly on the menu and disabling shadowed text on your desktop. That even looks better than the Windows screenshots posted earlier.

Do you think so? The screen shot makes it appear better than it is. I should say 'better than it was', as I used the instructions on the web page I posted the link to earlier to enable FreeType native hinting (whatever that is). It's actually improved things slightly, believe it or not. It's still not as good as Windows, but I'm getting there... slowly. I'll give your ideas a try and post back.

Just a little update. I've managed to get my fonts looking good now. They're a little too big, but it's not a problem. At least now they are clear! It was the FreeType instructions and your suggestions that made it possible. Thank you everyone who lent a hand!

I personally can't see much wrong with that. It looks great.

You do not have the gcc/cc compilers installed if you were running RedHat 9 I would say install the "devellopment packages" modules. If you succed with freetype, please let me know.