It's something I've noticed for a while but I've now got a mac emulation thing going and it's become really noticable how bad my fonts look in suse compared to every other distro I've tried.
For example, I've tried using several different fonts and then booted up ubuntu or fedora and used the same fonts and anti-aliasing settings and they look so much smoother in the other distros.
As well as this, I've noticed that shadows, whether using xcompmgr or kompmgr, look very poor in suse also, whereas they look great with other distros, it sort of looks like someone has drawn around the windows with a marker, by which I mean in other distros the shadows fade smoothly into the desktop but with suse there is a slight, but obvious line where the shadow finishes.
And once again, this is when using identical settings to the other distros.
Both the fonts and shadows issues are the same whether using kde, gnome or xfce.
I'm using an unsupported video card and my xorg.conf is pretty much identical to ubuntu so I really don't know where to start.
It may seem these problems are pretty insignificant but after solving a couple of other problems everything else about suse is so perfect.

I know Suse doesnt come with the Microsoft True Type fonts by default. Have you installed those through YOU (Yast online update)?

Yeah I installed those as soon as I started using suse.
I would also like to point out that I have no other display related problems whatsoever, everything else looks great. It's just the shadows and fonts.

What kind of graphics card and monitor do you have?
Perhaps the config of X (xorg.conf) is not the same as the other distros? I can suggest doing a compare of them. Maybe even go through the x86freeconfig in the Konsole. It did help solve my problems on my desktop computer.

Hi, I think your problem might be caused by having the LCD panel expansion enabled in your Bios, and then having SuSE run your X-server at a smaller resolution. ie, my Dell D610 has a 1400 CLD, but the Xserver and KDE, as setup by SuSE is only running at 1280x1024. If in the Bios you have the lcd panel expansion enabled, then what happens is that the 1280 get expanded to fill 1400, and all the fonts look rough and bad. Disable the bio lcd panel expansion and it looks much better.

Of course, I wish SuSE would let my Dell D610 run at 1400 screen resolution, but apparently, Dell bioses only report VESA standard resolutions to the SuSE installer, and 1400 is not a standard resolution, so Dell makes SuSE think its a 1280x1024 LCD panel.
r

Fonts look best when you have the one your using. Sometimes the default substitutes are less than attractive. I'd try experimenting with other fonts to see if they look better for you. I find the dejavu open source fonts as good performers on my setup. I think that in general san serif fonts look better than the serif fonts applications seem to default to. This of course may be more subjective than scientific.