I have been raging about the font rendering on Linux for years. It just sucks. Font has jagged edges and it looks very weird. I dual-boot with windows and the font there is very nice. So, I asked Claude ai to help me and it did a great job and my font is now is actually better than windows. I wanted to share it with everyone in case you have the same issue with the font on Linux.
Here it is:
- First, install required packages:
sudo pacman -S freetype2 cairo fontconfig
2. Install better fonts:
sudo pacman -S ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation noto-fonts ttf-roboto ttf-roboto-mono ttf-droid ttf-opensans ttf-hack ttf-fira-code
I have also installed Segoe ui and Segoe UI Variable fonts and that is what I’m using now.
3. Create or edit the font configuration file:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/fonts/conf.d
sudo nano /etc/fonts/local.conf
4. Add this configuration to local.conf:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font">
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
<edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
<edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
<const>hintslight</const>
</edit>
<edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
<edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign">
<const>lcddefault</const>
</edit>
<edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
<edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<!-- Increase contrast slightly for all fonts This is not mandatory and can be commented out-->
<match target="font">
<edit name="weight" mode="assign">
<const>medium</const>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
5. Create a file for FreeType settings:
sudo nano/etc/profile.d/freetype2.sh
6. Add these export commands (I found it there already, but it was commented out. Just removed the “#”):
export FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=40"
7. Enable subpixel rendering: (You might get a message that says “File exist”, that’s ok. It means it was already there)
sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/
sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/
8. Clear and regenerate font cache:
fc-cache -fv
9. For better Java application fonts:
sudo pacman -S jre-openjdk fontconfig
10. Reboot
Additional optional steps: a. For better Firefox font rendering, in about:config: Set
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode
to 5 (This doesn’t exist in FF. You create it, set it to “number” and give it a value of 5)
Set
gfx.webrender.all
to true
b. If you use VSCode, add to settings.json:
{
"editor.fontFamily": "'Fira Code, 'Droid Sans Mono', 'monospace'",
"editor.fontLigatures": true
}
Truly hope this help someone. Share it with others if you think it will help them.
Thanks :)
Freetype2, fontconfig and cairo are going to be pulled in as dependencies when you install just about any desktop app/library eg firefox, gtk so this is a no-op. Same for installing the jre and fontconfig again. Its pointless. The freetype2.sh line is commented out because that has been the default setting for the last 8 years so it makes no difference. The gfx.webrender.all setting in firefox is an override to force something it is most likely already doing based on the detected environment. If you check about:support the chances are you are already using hardware rendering. And its a performance and not quality setting. Half of this makes no sense.
Installing nicer fonts is always a good idea and also setting your desktop and application default fonts.
Some of the local.conf settings could potentially makes a big difference if your desktop environment defaults/user settings aren’t good. Don’t know a huge amount about freetype settings but I suspect using assign in there might override desktop environment settings which some people might not want.
My conversation with any llm tends to go, “you got a, b, c wrong, it should be d, e and f” and it says “sorry, ofcourse it should be d, e and f, my mistake, here it is with d, e, f, g and h”. Then I say “g and h are wrong it should be i and j”. And it keeps going. In the end I write it myself. Huge time wasters.
The point you are missing is that yes, asking an LLM about these things is not at the level of advice from someone who knows their stuff. But if you dont know what you are doing and dont know enough to even know what the right things to search for are then even partialy useful advice about the thing you are trying to do is a massive help.
And yet people at work will take its word when asking about things they don’t know anything about beforehand and have no real way of fact checking without actually doing the research they are trying to avoid.