How do I turn off font anti-aliasing?
 

Finding the setting for KDE is easy enough, but a lot of things (that use GTK?), menu bars, browser text, Konsole, still have anti-aliased fonts. I found a setting for XftConfig that supposedly turns off anti-aliasing for everything X for middle-size fonts, leaving it on for very large and very small fonts, which would be fine. But it doesn't work. I've been searching all over the internet and forums for about 2 hours, and found nothing. KDE's setting took about 2 minutes to find.

switch, switch2, and xfontsel don't do it, as others have suggested.

xft-config might do it? but i can't find how to use it.

[newb rant]Why is Linux so freaking hard to use!?!?! It is impossible to find good help! GRR.[/rant]

you probably need to edit a fonts.conf file. Look for a
.fonts.conf
in your home directory (it's a hidden file). If it doesn't exist, simply create it. Here is what mine says:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font" >
<test compare="more" name="size" qual="any" >
<double>7</double>
</test>
<test compare="less" name="size" qual="any" >
<double>16</double>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<test compare="more" name="pixelsize" qual="any" >
<double>9</double>
</test>
<test compare="less" name="pixelsize" qual="any" >
<double>20</double>
</test>

You can adjust the numbers to your liking. I think the size is point size and pixel size is what it says - not sure, though.
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

My eyes! I can see clearly!

Thank you so much. I made the .font.conf file directly copied from yours as it didn't exist. I had already tried a similar configuration in some other file according to someone's directions, which didn't have any effect. So I was pessimistic about this, but it worked! I would be even happier if I could change the font size and face. I assume there is a similar way to do it?

(And why aren't there utilities for changing these things? Seems like a rather basic thing to have.)

Also, I'd like to make it global, so that GDM and such are not anti-aliased.

for making it global:
try copying the .fonts.conf file to /etc/fonts/local.conf
You have to be root and if local.conf doesn't exist, just create it.

I'm not sure what you have in mind by changing type face and size. Most of it controlled by the individual applications. You can take a look at /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. It has some settings that you could change. The alias sections are ones that I change so I'm not stuck with an ugly serif font. Go through the file and you can probably figure out a few things. You have to restart X for some of the changes to take effect (pressing ctrl-alt-backspace at the gdm screen will probably do it). Also, be absolutely sure to make a backup before changing anything.

i copied the file. it made it global! thank you very much. first gripe i've had with linux that's actually been fixed satisfactorily.

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