Arch Linux

Frantic

Member

Registered: 2009-01-22

Posts: 32

can not get good fonts :(

I'm doing my first arch install, I've been using Ubuntu for a while, but I don't like all the extra stuff that comes embedded and after reading some oppinions on different forums I decided to try arch because I was led to believe it's very customizable, has new stuff in the repos (as opposed to ubuntu which has py2.5, old pidgin, etc) and works great.

So I decided to install it on my laptop, Core2Duo with GF8600.

Everything is fine so far, I like how it feels and runs, but I can't get the damned fonts to look good in X.

First few installs I did and broke.
Then I turned to the arch wiki for guidelines. This didn't work either.
Then I followed the wikis step by step:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOr … _font_path
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gnome

I've also tried linking the 10-{hinting, lcd-subpixel-rgb}.confs from fonts/conf.avail, 0 change.

The closest I got was when I installed the artwiz and ms-ttf-fonts packages, but this made my Monospace font look horrible, and the rest of them didn't look too great either.
Funny thing was that before I installed these packages whenever I couldn't get hinting to work at all, when I opened the gnome appearance menu and changed the hinging and smoothing styles, nothing happened. Now it moves from horrible to degrees of bad.

I've tried starting from X configs generated by hwd and nvidia-xsetup. Also tried a lot of other stuff I can't recall now.

Ubuntu works out of the box on every computer I've tried, so I guess there are some simple rules to follow.
Is there not a tutorial that get's you going on this (imho vital) stuff?

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: can not get good fonts :(

Welcome to the forums.

Did you see this thread? It may be more of the same stuff that you've read, but it's worth a look:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=62851

Frantic

Member

Registered: 2009-01-22

Posts: 32

Re: can not get good fonts :(

Yep, seen that, didnt help

djseomun

Member

From: Durham, NC

Registered: 2008-10-19

Posts: 35

Website

Re: can not get good fonts :(

What about the "alternative minimalist approach" described in this wiki page?  That's what I do, and it works for me.  The fonts are all antialiased, and you only need one serif, one sans-serif, and one monospaced font.

falkman

Member

Registered: 2009-01-01

Posts: 7

Re: can not get good fonts :(

pacman -Sy ttf-bitstream-vera

I've always had ugly fonts, I use that... and restart(maybe an X restart would work but I don't know).

Works great, and I've never used Arch without it.

Frantic

Member

Registered: 2009-01-22

Posts: 32

Re: can not get good fonts :(

I'm not sure why but after installing ttf-bitstream-vera it works :-z

SOLVED

anyway now I have this problem:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=63709