Do you find fonts on your desktop ugly?
Make them look nice!

Fonts tutorial

thanx in advance

5. In the file /etc/X11/fs/config, section catalogue add this line:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype,

I do not have a file named config in my /etc/X11/fs directory... I am using Mandrake 10, where might I find this?

I also have mandrake 10 but the file was there no worries...

I have an LCD monitor and everything looks very pixely... is there something i can do to fix this?

LCD monitors can't change resolutions like a CRT can so make sure you are running at the native resolution of your LCD panel.

yeah its a 17" LCD and i´m running 1280x1024

Try enabling Anti-aliasing in the KDE Control Centre under LookNFeel | Fonts. This tries to make the text appear smoother by placing greyed pixels around the rough edges of the letters on your screen.

I installed everything from the tutorial and I put on anti-aliasing, but it still doesn't look that good. It looks better than before, but still a lot less than in windows. I also imported all fonts from the fonts directory on my windows partition.

I also have a 17" lcd sceen, although I don't think that should matter.

I'm looking forward to a solution to this... as I too still have the problem.

Did importing the fonts help at all Mark?

I downloaded and installed the freetype packages of this website. Some websites look better now, and some don't.

With Mozilla, Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Fonts
i was playing round with that a bit... everything still looks very pixely tho...

What do you mean by "pixely"? Do you want your fonts on an LCD screen (running Linux) to look like how the fonts do on an LCD screen running Windows? In my opinion, anti-alaised fonts look like hell on an LCD screen. There is a way to do this, but it requires a change in /some/dir/freetype-2.1.9/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h before you compile freetype.
Download the latest version of freetype2 at:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...?group_id=3157

After it is downloaded, as root copy it somewhere (i.e. /usr/share, or /usr/local) and:

# tar -zxvf freetype-2.1.9.tar.gz

Now, in "/some/dir/freetype-2.1.9/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h" hunt for

/* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */

around line 439. Remove the "/*" and "*/" at the beginning and end of the line. Save the changes. Go back to /some/dir/freetype-2.1.9/ and as root, type:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr
# make install

You will see a bunch of warnings about breaking anti-aliasing rules, but no worries. Now, install any Windows fonts you want. I installed them via 2 RPMs I found at http://webperf.org/msfonts/. Now, go to your fonts settings and select something like Tahoma or Verdana, which look nice on an LCD screen, and TURN OFF anti-aliasing. Log off and log back in. Now you have lovely Windows fonts on your Linux LCD screen (screen shot http://asuaf.org/~kpapp/downloads/Screenshot.png). The only problem I have found, is that not all fonts are affected (i.e. system GUI stuff like "Configure Your Computer" and Gnome apps) by the previous method if you use KDE...Gnome is good to go.

mmmm, that screenshot looks very nice. Thats what i'm after. I'll give it a go. many thanks.