has anyone managed to get fonts looking ok in Debian with antialiasing OFF?
I need it for LXQT, Debian 11.3 stable, firefox, chromium, gtk, qt

probably: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=285451

thanks.
most free fonts seem to have bad hinting, I'll try bitmap fonts.

edit: bitmap courier looks nice for system, in theory it should be a bit faster.
but vector fonts are needed for most programs.

I set resolution to 86DPI for Samsung971P, not sure if that is correct.

May I enquire why you think you want antialiasing OFF for all fonts?
It won't give you a performance boost.

That said, various bitmap fonts exist and fontconfig can be told to not scale them.
Font size matters - you can only choose such sizes that the font is designed for.

On my distro, the traditional formats are being replaced by OTB fonts.

PS: In some cases dpi matters too. Find out the right DPI for your monitor. https://dt.iki.fi/fontconfig-2

Because that's the way I like it, crisp and clear. I could ask you the same question BTW. On old computers (Amiga) there was no text antialiasing, so I got used to jagged lines. I might use it when my monitor has 300DPI or similar but it probably won't matter then. High contrast makes text easier to read, I think.

Fonts on Linux are known problem, and its mind boggling that its not yet solved. The relevant patents expired long ago.

I see.
The issue is similar to 3D graphics.

If the OP wants antialiasing off, then I think you need a font file where someone has generated each character by hand (bitmap fonts) and I'm guessing they need to do this for the size 8 to 15 or so. It would have to be for low DPI monitors.

Good news:
MS has already done the job for us.
I have installed the MS fonts on my system.
I turned off antialiasing and I use Arial.

It looks exactly like it does on Windows.

Sweet spots for fonts are multiples of 4, with 12 & 24 being better than 4 or 8. Also, scalable fonts are historically designed for 96 DPI, and suffer drastically as DPI falls, which means they improve immensely as DPI rises. Depending on your eyes, screen distance, and physical screen density & composition, the reasons for fonts manipulation are mostly gone by somewhere between 120 & 144 DPI. To illustrate, @96DPI a 12pt font has a nominal glyph pixel count of 72, while @120DPI, +25%, it has risen to 200. 6X12 vs. 10x12. @144, +50%, it has risen to 12x24 & 288. If you really want great fonts, get the screen density up, logically, physically, or both.

No need to get testy, the question was technically justified.

Fonts on Linux might have been a known problem, but it has been solved. I have no problems at all, and my monitor isn't hi-res either.
Usually it's just a question of installing the right fonts.

Anyhow, antialiasing OFF:
Create a file ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf that contains at least this:
Proof: see attachment 1.

Apart from that, choose the right font and the right size.

It's also possible to set bitmap fonts for your UI, see attachment 2.

Attached Thumbnails