Ugly fonts in openSUSE 11.2

English Applications
1

Hello

I just moved back to openSUSE after spending almost 2 years in ubuntu-land.

What happent to the fonts? Why are they so ugly? To me it looks like they are poorly rendered.
I installed openSUSE 11.2 on another computer to confirm the problem… it persists.

I took some screenshots to compare my settings.

Ubuntu: http://www.petur.eu/tmp/ubuntu.png
openSUSE: http://www.petur.eu/tmp/opensuse.png

The second screenshot doesn’t show, but both settings are using the exact same fonts and the same size. (Except the Window title font)

From those two, it should be very clear that Ubuntu renders them more nicely.

I don’t want to start an Ubuntu\openSUSE flame…

Can you help me to make my openSUSE machine display nice fonts… ?

2

I rarely use Firefox; so I am not sure how you might address this but I have noticed that in some applications the quality of a font improves with a change in magnification. Does zooming improve the quality?

It is possible that, though the fonts look the same size in Ubuntu and openSUSE, there is a slight difference in magnification at a crucial size for openSUSE.

3

I use Firefox, but have not really noticed a problem. (I can only compare openSUSE against Windows with Firefox and OpenOffice, and the latter is supperior). However I found this web page which suggests

The subpixel hinting implementation in freetype2 is disabled both upstream (by the freetype2 authors) and in the freetype2 RPM packages that ship with openSUSE because it might infringe Microsoft’s ClearType patents.

and explains how to rectify this by installing another package version.

Now, the author mentions that this is for improving fonts within the KDE environment, and they also have a suggestion for GTK apps within KDE, but it might help you pinpoint any differences that Ubuntu has with font rendering.

4

Hi, zooming does not improve the quality.

This problem is not firefox related, every other application has poor font quality compared to Ubuntu.

5

I followed the instructions on that page you refered to… without any luck :frowning:

6

What we don’t see, is whether the exact same font is used both in Ubuntu (Sans) and openSUSE (not visible). I don’t see Sans as an available font.

I followed the instructions from the page mentioned above, and fonts are smooth in KDE4, even in FF.