First let me say this. I’ve been running openSUSE for many, many years but lately, I just can’t handle the poor font rendering. Infinality font patches are old and don’t work nearly as well as on Archlinux (which I’m less fond of than openSUSE) but they have an infinality-bundle plus infinality-bundle-fonts which makes the desktop look so much better. I love openSUSE to bits but the font rendering out of the box is so bad it’s painful.
I’m wondering if someone has a method that they can share that they’ve used successfully to render an acceptable look. I’ve been struggling with this for far too long and it feels frustrating to have to do so much work just to make the desktop look respectable.
Wonder what buttons I have clicked because it seems I already have content of that repo installed. May be a KDE thing on 13.2?
Very subjective but with anti-aliasing settings at “RGB” and “Slight” fonts look quite good. Also the bunch I imported from a Windows 7 install. Default is horrid. Have to set it up.
If you are interested in Windows 7, Windows 8.1/10 or Windows Vista fonts for Linux you won’t find them here for one very sad reason: Xft and freetype cannot yet properly render them (yes, seven years after the introduction of ClearType v2 - they are still not usable under Linux).
Not for Windows 7 fonts as that is what I used. Possible they are better on Windows 7 but not hopeless on Linux.
Seems like he know what he is doing… he know Linux weaknesses if you click around on links Massive rant available.
Someone with too much time should make a comparison gallery of typical font output from all DEs, with diff. settings and video drivers.
What concerns me greatly is why isn’t this in the distribution by
default without the need for 3rd party repositories.
Fonts are an extremely important thing for any desktop and a source of
many, many complaints that I’ve heard over the years about openSUSE
Hi
AFAIK, some things are still encumbered by patents…
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Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.28-4-default
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I found a good configuration that doesn’t make me regret Windows, try it if you can:
don’t install any infinality or similar rendering tool;
install fetchmsttfonts from Yast;
copy Windows fonts ([noparse]c:\Windows\Fonts[/noparse]) and in Opensuse open the font manager, than add all Windows fonts in the “Personal fonts” settings page;
in Opensuse open “Fonts”, click on “Adjust all fonts”, and set DejavuSans (the “book” style is nice);
in the same “Fonts” settings page, set Antialiasing on “enabled”, click on “Configure” and set "hinting on “medium” or “moderate” according to your monitor and preferences (i like medium);
reboot;
enjoy.
Following these steps, also all web pages will be shown in the correct way as on a Windows system.
but I have no windows fonts installed or any special font repo and the page examples you have given look almost identical on my system (dear I say . . . perhaps even slightly better )
Unfortunately you need a Windows installation to copy those fonts, they can’t be shared due to EULA limitations as far as i know…
But screens don’t give you the real difference, it’s a lot better compared to the stock opensuse fonts configuration at least for me.
openSUSE fonts have come in for a lot of criticism over the years but (at least in my opinion) I don’t think those criticisms are really valid with the release of 13.1 & 13.2.
I think people forget that getting fonts to look nice in Windows can be fairly tricky as well. Often people get used to fonts in windows, come and take a look at openSUSE, and because the fonts don’t look the same immediately jump to - the fonts are not as good.
On my system I dual boot with Win7. I’ve set up the fonts as best I can in both operating systems and I think the stock fonts in openSUSE (for me) look significantly better than windows, but this may just be that I am used to OS fonts so am making the reverse jump that a lot of people make.
I certainly don’t think that installation of windows fonts is any longer necessary in openSUSE though. It comes packaged with a good set of fonts - and if users want more then there is a plethora of fonts available for free from google. I did find that since about 12.3 that installing msttfonts messed with the way my system looked so stopped installing them from that point.
The way fonts look though is very subjective so the most important thing is getting the system to look the way you want.
If you are in to web dev. Windows fonts are necessary as replacement fonts wont cut it - even if they might look as good.
If I was king of release policies I would probably add a help file or pdf link which would be visible right after install. Mimicking click baiting “10 things to do after you install XXXX” posts - where XXXX is what ever popular distro. Info will be available elsewhere, is already in help file, search “fonts” (KDE help) but for example this font setup is so important it should be in users face. Many are lazy and might never get very far before going MEH! Some will also be new/confused and wont easily navigate wiki/forum. On the other hand if there was such a list of suggested actions it would likely be followed.
I am also lazy so not bothered enough to test but I wonder if those MS fonts available from openSUSE, there are 2 packages, look 100% the same as those I copied over from Win7? File sizes are very much not the same. May be Win7 originals are better looking when hit with anti-aliasing/hinting? If so that is useful and not that obvious info for a new user - and will improve openSUSE experience. Even more if there are issues with those packages. As far as I have checked only some Win8 fonts are not legal to use, as in not outside THAT win8 install. Or MS has to be contacted blah blah. Win7 should be ok to recycle. Reason those packages are okayed must be due to age/XP license or something.
this is of course not true.
The studio where I am currently working - there are 23 developers - nobody is using windows and nobody has installed windows fonts on the system that they are using.
Of course we have windows systems for testing to see how things look though.
Nothing will surprise me regarding web devs. and testing - but they have Windows avail. so are testing. A VM can also make up for Windows fonts but is just easier to set up browsers per Windows, because much web stuff is targeted for those fonts. I think result is better on many sites with Windows fonts so not really off topic. Looks matters. Can do more in Linux 100% is bonus.
I have to agree with those comments, and most of your post. Maybe because we still seem to be running the same ThinkPad (aged 5) and multi-booting with Win 7.
that’s the good thing about Thinkpads. They tend to just go and go and are (usually) relatively trouble free.
My old beast still has a couple of years left in her yet. Couldn’t ask more for what was really a budget computer.
Partner has an L510 a year older than mine still going strong. Only difference is hers has a celeron processor, built in cam and a serial port.
Massive rant available.
)
I was happy enough before.