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    Blurry Fonts

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by graycolor, Nov 18, 2010.

  1. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm getting blurry fonts in Fedora running under VirtualBox. Resolution is set to highest also.

    Any ideas?
     
  2. 1ceBlu3

    1ceBlu3 Notebook Deity

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    Have you tried System -> Preferences -> Appearance and on the Fonts tab, enable "Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)"?
     
  3. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah, even made sure I had 96 dots per inch and the correct subpixel order as well.
     
  4. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    You've probably tried adjusting hinting then too, which could make your fonts blurry. Are you running anything like compiz? If so, try a standard window manager like metacity.
    Code:
    metacity --replace
     
  5. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    Nope, just the default install. Maybe it's because I'm running it under Virtual Box I did install the quest additions.
     
  6. weinter

    weinter /dev/null

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    You need to load a few truetype fonts to make it good.
     
  7. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    TrueType, you mean the ones from MS. I don't think that's the problem, because even my desktop fonts are somewhat blurry. I'll report back if I notice a change.
     
  8. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    I figured out the problem its the font rendering in Linux. Basically its the best Linux could do at the moment under LCDs. Does this problem exist under matte LCDs? I know they're both LCDs, but why was Debian able to provide better fonts than windows running on a matte screen?
     
  9. greenfish

    greenfish Notebook Geek

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    You're right about the font rendering but I very much disagree on your debian looking better then windows 7.

    i'm using freetype2-ubuntu fontconfig-ubuntu libxft-ubuntu on my archlinux system and they are looking great.

    Still the font rendering on windows is still better.

    But getting blurry fonts is NOT due to font rendering sounds more like you have subpixel disabled.

    What's the output of this command:

    xdpyinfo | grep "dots per inch"

    ?
     
  10. graycolor

    graycolor Notebook Evangelist

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    Debian fonts do look better on my thinkpad x31, I was comparing windows XP to Debian. Not windows 7 to Debian.

    For my other windows 7 computer, yeah Debian fonts look just horrible. I just recently dual-booted both Fedora and Ubuntu and found the fonts on Ubuntu are perfectly acceptable. Although not as good as windows 7. How do I get this type of Ubuntu font rendering to work under fedora? Is this possible?