Ubuntu Feisty: How to stop fonts looking like shit.
I found this quite useful. Ever since I installed Ubuntu 7.04, “Feisty Fawn” on my laptop a couple of months ago it was always bugging me that the fonts looked so utterly shitty on it. I actually went googling and found a solution tonight.
The flow of the instructions given on the ubuntu forums thread is a bit arseways, so here’s how to do it in a nutshell:
- Add the repositories you need to get the relevant packages to Synaptic:
From a terminal, run the following command to bring up Synaptic’s repository list in gedit:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.listNow add the following two lines to the end of this file:
deb http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fontsSave it and close gedit.
deb-src http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts - Now you need to import the gpg keys that Synaptic needs to trust the new repository. Run the following command from the terminal:
wget http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu/937215FF.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -Don’t forget the - at the end of the line! - Now configure Ubuntu to use the new font smoothing technique. Again, run the following command from the terminal:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-configThe options I chose are the same as mentioned in the Ubuntu forums thread linked above - Native,Always,No. - Now get it to use the settings you just configured. From the terminal:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
That’s it! To actually see the effect of this you will need to restart the x-server (i.e. the whole GUI). You could log out or reboot, but I just pressed ctrl+alt+backspace. Save any stuff you have open before doing this!
Looks much nicer now!
Michael O'Leary on August 7th, 2007
Screenshot ??
Steve on August 7th, 2007
I’ll get an after-screenshot later. Don’t have one from before, but trust me the fonts looked like shit
Master of the Obvious on August 8th, 2007
Always a bloody long-winded sequence of commands isn’t it?
I thought I had a lot of stuff to tweak and set up when I do a fresh reinstall of Windows… I think Linux would drive me bonkers if I had to use it as my full time OS and go through this over and over.
As a Windows “clear type” fan, I can appreciate how funky it must be to get rid of shit-looking fonts.
Congrats on the discovery.
Steve on August 9th, 2007
Agreed. Windows is my main OS both at home and at work. I use Linux on my laptop more out of geeky curiosity than anything else, and because I have a Windows laptop that I use for work anyway.
I had to do a load of other shite after I installed it to get the laptop’s card reader working, and until the current release of Ubuntu I used to have to do a massive load of utter bollocks at the terminal to get WPA encryption working with my wireless lan.
Master of the Obvious on August 9th, 2007
I’m the same, I dabble with Linux, but only because I want to be prepared when the revolution comes.
Not quite sure at this stage what that revolution might be, but whatever it is I think Linux is going to come into it somewhere.
Discount finger-nail enlargement pills! on November 10th, 2007
Great comment Nika… do you walk up to groups of people at parties and say “Good conversation! Keep talking!”?
(Actually that’s not a bad idea, might be a good ice-breaker.)
Steve on November 10th, 2007
bang! and the spam is gone.
And Akismet was doing so well. That’s the first one its let through since I installed it. Now that its been marked as spam it shouldn’t reappear though
Discount finger-nail enlargement pills! on November 10th, 2007
Meh, getting an API key sounds like a royal pain in the balls… are there many hoops to jump through? Or do you just throw an email address at them, then click on the validation link?
I think I’ve only gotten one comment like that so far… I think I approved it too! Just to make it look like people read my blog, plus it was an alright site… though between rel=nofollow and the whopping PR2 I weild, I think the joke’s on him
Ah bless.
Steve on November 10th, 2007
Ah its easy enough. You just sign up for an account on wordpress.com and they mail you the api key. You can opt out of having a wordpress.com blog and all that shite.