I know there are like a billion different posts on this topic but they also say a billion different things for a billion different distributions (okay, I admit to a slight case of exaggeration). How do I get mozilla to use anti-aliased fonts in rendering web pages?

I've seen a few things 1) use gdkxft - or something like that, 2) merely recompile with --use-xft as an option, 3) it's as simple as changing a few things in the unix.js file.

Does slackware 8.1 come with freetype2 by default? What's the best/easiest way to get anti-aliased fonts in mozilla? Thanks.

Look at Fontconfig and Xft Support For Mozilla