In openSUSE 10.3, subpixel hinting was disable and required you to patch freetype which was quite annoying. Is it there out of the box now in openSUSE 11, like most other distros?
I have always had subpixelhinting on openSUSE, well even if I don’t, they still pwn 
Same concern over here too. Suse 10.3 looked really good with the patched freetype builds, I don’t see any such thing in the 11.0 RC (or the updates on the final 11.0 that I’m performing now…). I read a bug report on Bugzilla that there is a bug in the QT libraries that defines the subpixel hinting at build time as opposed to run time.
Any experiences in having cleartype-subpixel hinting for 11.0?
-Anshul
If you do a search for “font” under our search function, you will get a list of threads, a couple of which might have some useful information:
oldcpu,
I did indeed search the forums and browsed those threads too. The threads refer to adding Microsoft fonts and not specifically to the issue of subpixel hinting, i.e. cleartype font rendering. While some might argue that the current dispensation of enabling only the BCI is good enough, cleartype does add that extra touch and makes it perfect.
Even a patched RPM from the repos for 11.0 dosen’t fix the rendering for ant QT4 app, while the QT3 apps render perfectly. Seems to be a QT4 issue…
-Anshul
As far as i know (read it somewhere) the subpixel hinting is disabled upstream because of some legal concerns and thatswhy it is also disabled in Opensuse. But there are someways to enable it.
miggols99,
The subpixel rendering you’re talking about is the disabling of subpixel hinting by Opensuse and not by Trolltech, the company behind by Qt. There is a bug report on their bug tracker (Bug Tracker — Trolltech) that subpixel hinting will be enabled in the 4.5.0 versions.
-Anshul
To enable subpixel hinting in openSUSE 11/KDE 4 just run “kcmshell4 fonts” as user and enable it. No patching needed…
Uh…that still doesn’t give me nice fonts. They’re still all horrible.
Firefox is a GTK application - KDE font settings have no effect in it.
I must agree that fonts are not too great in opensuse by default. Somehow I must admit that for me the only distro that really nailed the font issue is Ubuntu. I do not run ubuntu myself but I truly find their fonts the best around.
On my arch setup I always replace the packages libxft cairo fontconfig with the ubuntu patched replacements making it look MUCH better.
stefan
SSDW 
FF fonts really do look godforsakenawful.
This is the correct answer. Freetype disabled subpixel hinting (by default) due to potential saber-rattling from Microsoft regarding ClearType patents, and openSUSE is respecting the upstream project.
To enable it, you can either download the patched version or modify the .spec file in the rpm.src file.
This is a different thing from the DE/GUI/toolkit-specific hinting settings that everyone seems to be refering to, since it is at the xorg level and would relate to everything above it.
From my experience, it’s more of an issue with lower DPI displays. It’s less noticeable on higher-resolution displays, which is why everyone will seem to have a different opinion on it’s relevance.
Cheers,
KV
what did strike me as odd is that for me fonts look MUCH better in KDE4.0.82 then in stock 4.0.4
stefan